


Get What You Need

by Dunaven



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Anal Sex, Comfort, Dean is eleven, Father/Son Incest, Grieving, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Oral Sex, Supernatural Elements, no coersion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2020-12-29 01:10:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 26
Words: 37,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21146258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dunaven/pseuds/Dunaven
Summary: Dean was all John had left. That doesn't excuse what he did.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "You can't always get what you want  
But if you try sometime you find  
You get what you need"  
\- the Rolling Stones
> 
> "Shine a light through an open door  
Love and life I will divide  
Turn away 'cause I need you more  
Feel the heartbeat in my mind  
It's the way I'm feeling I just can't deny  
But I've gotta let it go  
We found love in a hopeless place"  
\- as performed by Rihanna

[ ](https://imgur.com/SfwgrAL)

On the day the world ended, John Henry Williams sprawled on the sofa in his mancave. Several hours ago, after the final guests evacuated, his pretty blond wife marched upstairs and packed a bag.

She didn’t change out of her black dress, or say where she’s going. John knew. He didn’t try to stop her. For their boy’s sake, he might have asked her to reconsider, but his parched throat hadn’t let him speak all day. Mary climbed into their station wagon and drove away like she was going to pick up a pizza. Was he supposed to keep paying for the car?

Then, he’d retreated to the last safe place on the planet. Slouched down on this second-hand couch (that’s all she’d let him but) and has since busied his calloused hands toying with his lifeless meat. 

Can’t really call it jerking when your damn wang don’t work for shit. It’s a common misconception that nature’s greatest gift to a man is his penis. It’s the proper use and function of that penis that’s the gift. Without that, the penis itself is just an extremity.

John could pee just fine, but he hadn’t been nail-banging hard in half a year. “Erectile dysfunction” was another insult on an injurious time of his life. Why pour salt in a mortal wound?

Bastard bill collectors don’t give a shit whether a man is in or out of work. They don’t care who lives or dies. All they want is their money on the first of the month. The Williams savings account had dwindled like sand in an hourglass. What was left might last two months. Then John would have to get serious. As if he’d spent the last seven months on a picnic.

Masturbation ought to be a celebration, or at least enjoyable. But this fiddling with his junk was one more pitiful reminder of failure. A continuation of the day’s mourning. No one would call what he was doing masturbation, anyway. Flopping off was more like it. Lifting his beautiful, useless, kielbasa cock and letting it fall onto his thigh with a dull thwop.

The poor girl on the screen was stretched about as wide as a pussy can go. If that wasn't pain, it sure looked like it. John tugged on his disinterested dick, mouth wide - filling the room with impotent chants:

“Come on. Come on.”

It was over now. The worst was over. He ought to be relieved. Had been too exhausted to cry. Maybe tears would come later, and John would drown in them. Or drift away.

He fixated bloodshot eyes on the screen. Mindy Lin was exactly what he liked: a triple D cup, tiny waist, round-assed Filipina doll. Viciously banged by a pack of swarthy Hispanics. Still, his dick lay limp as a worn-down greyhound. Ran strong for a while. Half dead now.

She was noisy too, panting and whimpering, fake lashes wet and batting at the camera.

Nothing.

Seven months, John made excuses like a woman.

“Tired.” 

“Got to get up early.” 

“Too full from dinner.” 

“Just took a shower.” 

“Sorry, babe.”

He’d even used the gotdam headache excuse. No wonder Mary left. What is a man without his dick? No longer a man. 

The beautiful, ornate Colt John inherited from his father was in the safe, with the others. It would take three minutes to retrieve and load it. It would also require him to stand and walk up two flights of stairs. Far too much Jack Daniels in his veins for that nonsense. John could float around in that fantasy, but there was no way he’d put his son through that. Not now.

Speak of the little devil, the doorknob turned and in one horrifying nanosecond, John realized that he hadn’t lock the door. He scrambled to pull a blanket over his lap and flicked off the screen, praise the good Lord for creating the remote control. Boy didn’t need to see that.

Dean stood in the doorway in his Transformer PJs. “Do we have mayo?”

“Don’t you fucking knock?”

The boy blinked, dazed for a moment before he backed out of the room and closed the door.

John shut his eyes and dropped his face into his palms. 

Eleven years, he’d done so well not letting the ghost of his father raise his kids. Under stress, John often failed and became the same jackass as ol’ Hank Williams. (Not that one). It was unacceptable, though. That boy had lost his brother and his mother in the same week. John couldn’t afford to desert him. Not even emotionally. Not even for one drunken moment.

He put down the remote, let the blanket fall to the floor and pulled up his funeral slacks. The floor tilted like a carnival ride, but if he walked slowly, he could make it to Dean’s bedside, tuck him in. Or at least offer. John’s big boy hadn’t gone for that in over a year.

Gripping the railing, John counted the stairs as he climbed. He found his son in front of the open fridge, sobbing onto a jar of mustard. John sighed, wiped his mouth and pulled Dean to his chest. Wrapped both arms as tight around him as they’d go.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I’m sorry, okay? I ... We all... What kind of sandwich you making?”

Dean cried for a minute. Man, it must feel so good to be eleven and free like that.

“Roast beef,” he whimpered.

“Yeah, you can’t have mustard on a roast beef sammich, right?”

Dean shook his head, dried his eyes with his palms. Wiped his nose on his wrist, trying to look away.

“Hey,” John said. “Hey, you cry all you need to.”

Ol' Hank was doing the Twist in the Resurrection Cemetery, as his oldest boy told his older boy to cry. His only boy, now. John had to remember that. His firstborn may as well be his only begotten, because little Sammy was gone.

John hung his head, and conquered the tears he’d told Dean to shed. Not that anyone could judge him. Not today. 

“When’s mom…”

John shrugged, shook his head. He forced a smile, and clapped his boy on the shoulder. Didn’t give an answer he didn’t have. Dean nodded.

Grabbing the keys from the hook by the backdoor, John said, “Let’s go get some mayo.”

“Should I put on jeans or something?”

“Nah, you’re great.”

He let Dean pick the music, expecting AC/DC. Instead, Dean selected Journey, the softest of John’s rock. Sam’s favorite. 

_ When the lights go down in the city _

_ And the sun shines on the bay. _

John clicked off the radio before the music chokes him. “Let’s just…” 

They bought mayonnaise and a year supply of chips. John restocked his stash of beer and Jack. They filled the cart with the portraits of Dean’s girlfriend, Little Debbie.

When they returned to the man cave, John quietly tucked away Busty Asian Bangs. That left two cases on the table: Kong for the Atari and the VHS of ET.

They spread their spoils on the floor in front of the TV. While that dick-looking, sawed-off alien waddled around with those kids, the Williams men noshed like a pair of cavedudes who’d plundered a vending machine. 

Dean burped, grinned and fell back, clutching his stomach. For the first time in months, John’s lungs fully filled. It was a bit of a miracle how much food Dean consumed. There’d been plenty frightened speculation about how Dean would adjust to Sam’s passing: loss of appetite, psychological breakdown, a general inability to function. Those boys had been inseparable. But aside from the one crying spell, he was holding up remarkably. 

“All right,” John said. “Time for bed, little piglet.”

“It’s not that late.”

John’s watch differed. It reported 1:32 AM. 

“Off to bed. I mean it.”

“One round of Kong,” Dean bargained, as if he held any power to negotiate. “If I beat you, I get another hour.”

“To do what?”

He shrugged.

John wasn’t sleeping either. Hadn’t for months. He shook on the deal and the boy crawled over to cue up the game. Somehow, he found the jacket for another Mindy Lin groupfuck. John snatched it away, but Dean froze like he’d been paralyzed by an electrical shock.

There was no point pretending it hadn’t happened. Instead, John made an executive decision. He splashed a few tablespoons of Jack into his son’s juice cup. It was a good a night as any for man talk.

“I assume you like girls by now.”

Not that a gang bang is the same as a 7th grader with pigtails and breast buds. Dean sniffed the contents of his glass. John scratched his head, banished from his comfort zone. Ol’ Hank had compared women to safari prey. 

“You got a little crush?”

“Not talking about this, Dad.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

Dean screwed up his face and shook his head, amplifying John’s curiosity. When was the last time he talked to his kid about something other than Sam’s condition.

“My first crush was on Madison Cho,” John said.

And the rest was history.

Mary Campbell was a separate story altogether.

“She wrecked my heart,” John laughed bitterly. “Just pulverized it.”

Dean tried his first sip and frowned like his father had given him motor oil to drink. 

“Thought we had something going, and she shows up to the Sadie Hawkins dance with Brad Cornell.”

“Who’s Sadie Hawkins?”

“Not the point.” John laughed again. “What’s her name? The girl you like?”

John wouldn’t know the girl, anyway. John couldn’t name a single kid in his son’s class. He hadn’t set foot in Dean’s school in years. Mary handled all that. His face warmed, threatening tears again. 

How much had John missed? He’d wasted his best years slaving for Pritchard Insurance all day and half the night, only to be cast away like a ten-buck whore.

“Dad? You okay?”

“Yeah. Why don’t you just describe her to me?”

“Don’t want to talk about it.”

John didn’t mean to get mad. Three-quarters of his agitation, was drunk anger. That was also why he couldn’t just drop it. “What’s her name, Dean? Just fucking tell me.”

“It’s a boy.”

Dead silence. 

One son dead. The other gay. 

Curses upon curses. Ashes and dust on John’s head, like some kind of biblical plague.

Before he could find a word, Dean fled the basement, feet thumping the steps.

The house was dark and empty. John ought to leave the boy alone. Ought to finish this bottle and pass out. Put the world out of his misery.

But once again he staggered up. Through the kitchen and dining room. Resting a moment before he braved the second flight. 

He knocked softly on the boys’ door. On Dean’s door. Without being invited, he entered and sat on the side of the bottom bunk. Sam’s bed.

Even John could still smell him there. Or maybe that was the month’s worth of Dean’s night sweat. The boy commandeered this bunk the night his brother went into the hospital. Since then, he hadn’t surrendered the bed or the sheets to washing.

“I’m not mad at you.” John dropped a hand on Dean’s shoulder.

His son didn’t come out from under the blanket. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry”

All John wanted was a fucking break. Does everything have to be broken? 

“Dean. I’m not…It’s okay. It’s not the end of the world. Look at me. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

Dean let his dad pull down the covers enough to dry his face with the fabric and kiss his forehead. John pulled his kid close. Inhaled more sweat than shampoo. Someday,Dean would remember this moment. Being held this way. Only, he’ll be in some guy's arms, probably getting ready to jerk him off.

Without warning, John’s skin pricked awake and his dick twitched. More activity than it had shown in months. At the thought of his son touching another man’s cock.

And sucking it. Don’t forget that.

A rush of heat.

John sat back. Stared at cotton candy lips, emerald eyes wet from the tears.

“You’re not mad?” Dean asked.

“No way,” John replied, acting as normal as he didn’t feel. “Elton John’s cool, right?

“No.”

John chuckled. The kid wasn’t wrong, and it was time for John to get out of there and figure out this reaction. To shut it down.

That’s what he ought to have done. Instead, John let his liquor-addled brain place his hand on the Dean’s firm, creme-pie filled belly. 

“So, what was the kid's name?”

Dean’s eyes popped wide, but he didn’t answer. 

“Why don’t you describe him to me?”

That hand Itsy Bitsy Spidered under the fabric, up to Dean’s sternum where it rested on the soft, warm skin before creeping over to rest above the fluttering heartbeat.

Yes. Better than porn. John hotter than he’d been in eons. A stroke of genius made him pat his knees. Dean’s eyes grew even wider and John nodded an encouragement. When was the last time his little boy sat on his lap?

Careful not to let Dean’s thigh touch his burgeoning cock, John just enjoyed the blending sensations: the boy’s featherweight on his leg and leaning back on his arm, the heat of his own erection. The cold confusion and warm rush in his chest. 

“He’s got nice eyes,” Dean said finally.

John nodded. Was he listening to hear if Dean’s crush looked like him? Was he that crazy? Suddenly shy, Dean buried his face in his father’s shoulder, stirring up a new flame. 

Ho Lee Fuck

What is this even?

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Dean mumbled against John’s neck. “There’s cute girls, too.”

“But you like this boy?”

Dean shrugged.

“Not…” John imitated shrug. “What’s special about him?”

“I don’t know. I just…”

“So, how do you know it’s even that? Maybe it’s admiration. Is he a good speller or something?”

“No, Dad. Gosh, shut up.” Dean gave a weak shove.

John smiled. “So, then how do you know you like him?

“Because I’m always thinking about kissing him.”

John could relate. His entire body had wound itself into a pulsing unit of want. He planted a kiss on his son’s shoulder to keep himself from bursting. Dean responded with those same, big surprised eyes.

Not that John wasn’t usually affectionate. He’d put in the effort, done the work to make himself a father who hugs his boys. His boy.

His son. Singular.

John dropped his face onto hairless skin and forbade himself to cry. Failed. Warm and fresh, Dean soaked up his tears. John’s other little boy was cold. In the ground. Rotting. 

Dean did what John was supposed to. He swung a skinny arm around his father’s neck, the other around his shoulder and hung on tight, shushing him. 

Shushing and pledging that it was okay. Nothing was freaking okay. Everything was irreparably shattered. Including John’s mind. Or at least his dick’s mind.

“What else do you want to do with him?” he asked with his lips against Dean’s. Shoulder.

“Huh?”

John peered at Dean’s mouth. Brushed a thumb over his lower lip. The boy opened enough for his father to slip inside and hook it gently between his teeth.

What he needed was for Dean to fight or yell. John would back off. He’d go back downstairs, bewildered and beat off. Then he’d fall asleep and forget it by dawn. However, Dean showed no such mercy. Instead of pushing John away, he sucked in that thumb, comforting its course underside with his warm, wet tongue. 


	2. Chapter 2

John awakened with a killer headache, but only a modicum of shame. He’d escaped long before the alcohol dissolved all of his self-control. Last night was a strange, swirling anamoly of body and mind drowning in liquor and grief, doing unpredictable things.

The following morning, once his head was clear, he heard between Dean’s lines. He understood who his crush is. Was.

John had more than suspected his sons. He’d witnessed them. Well, he’d stumbled upon enough evidence to know what was going on. Dean scrambling back up to his bed. The giggling. How often had he found them cuddled in the same bed like an octopus with tangled limbs?

With her Episcopal sensibilities, Mary would have freaked out. She was never a little boy. She couldn’t understand that urge to be forever humping something. Ol’ Hank would’ve torn 10 year old Johnny a new navel if he’d seen his boy grinding up against his cousin Charlie behind a shed at the family reunion. But there was never any harm in fooling around. That was how kids learn.

The only reaction John ever had about Sam and Dean’s play was a weird twinge of jealousy. Not that he wanted to separate them. Not ever. He’d secretly longed to participate. The same blend of nostalgia, admiration and envy he felt watching twenty-somethings leap and laugh through a pick up game of basketball.

A quiet hum of envy so far beneath the surface that John never acknowledged it.

Last night had been no hum. It was a banshee’s mad howl, stretching John’s skin too tight over his bones. Making him ill-fitted to call himself father. But it ended with an unaddressed erection and no harm done.

The man pulled his pounding skull and sore muscles from the bed. Took a piss. Skipped the shower and shave.

An insidious swell of shame washed cold over him, tempting him to retreat to the basement, lock the door and hide from his son.  
Hide from his sin.

John struck a bargain with himself. He ground, brewed and drank his coffee clutching the paper out of habit, grazing over sports and comics.  
Strange how normal, the Samless world.

Sammy had been in the hospital for weeks, fighting. Losing. Giving his family time to adjust to his absence. Guilt lodged low in John’s throat.

The phone rang. He made the mistake of answering, because it might have been Mary. Only it wasn’t.

John slammed down the receiver, cursing bill collectors, banks and all the fucking fountainpen bandits. Did they think he was some kind of slacker?

John pointedly did not tell the tale the agent on the phone how he was laid off three months before his eight-year-old was diagnosed with stage four lymphoma. It was an impossible choice: pay for experimental treatment, or everything else.

It wasn’t difficult to decide. Credit cards, second mortgage. John would have sold his goddamn organs if Uncle Sam would have let him. How many nights did he fantasize about putting a bullet in each of their heads and being done with it?

Around noon, he began to suspect Dean was hiding from him. Perhaps the boy had an equally vivid memory of sucking his Daddy’s thumb to be ashamed of.

“Dean?”

Not in Sam’s bottom bunk or his own top. Or in front of the TV. Or in the front yard. And gradually the search became frantic. Finally, John stood on the porch and followed the music to the utility closet. On the other side of the door, Bobby Darin was singing You Send Me while young Dean Williams crooned right along, reaching at least half of the notes.

Dean was a rock and roll man, like John. Easily listening oldies was 100% Sam’s thing.

John eased the door open and found the boy in his underwear, on the floor with several firearms scattered around him. Between songs, he mumbled to himself, “… if he wants to… you think that’s a good idea?…if he needs it…”

Fear and anger flared to John’s surface. Like he’d done a thousand times, he swallowed the stock violence, let it boil in his guts before he sternly said, “Son, these are not toys.”

“I know, Dad.” Dean said without looking up. “They’re not loaded or anything.”

John didn’t ask who Dean was talking to. He already knew that Dean was talking to himself, pretending Sam could hear. Some shrink might warn that it was an early sign of disassociation. John wouldn’t begrudge the boy anything that got him through the night.

For his and Mary’s tenth anniversary, John commissioned a family set of revolvers. Back when he was working and pulling in enough money for that sort of extravagance. Dean had spread them out around himself on the cold linoleum floor, forcing his dad to take inventory:

The pearl inlay on Mary’s grip panels. The jade on Dean’s bite-sized piece. Wood for Sam’s pee-wee. John’s pure onyx black. They’d spent a weekend in the RV, target shooting in Milford State Park. This was two summers earlier. Back before Sam got sick.

The sharp stink of the polish brought John’s mind back to the room where Dean was frantically scrubbing Sam’s gun. He watched in silence as the boy cleaned them all, one by one and carefully put them away.

That was when he noticed the menagerie of wood-carved animals. The one good, useful, clean thing John had learned from Ol’ Hank was how to take a dead stick and whittle it into something beautiful. John, in turn, had taught his boys. (While Mary groused that they were too young to handle the tools.)

“It was allright to lose a little skin from time to time.”  
That was John’s father speaking. He’d sure whipped off enough of John’s hide.

Sam’s wood critters had always turned out more detailed than his big brother’s. Dean would start strong and quickly lose patience and focus every ten minutes. He’d run off to do something else, then return for another burst of handiwork. When the boys pooled their creatures together, they had quite the ark. It was always easy to tell who’d carved which of the ducks, dogs or buffalos.

Dean had lined them all up, two by two, in a long march nowhere.

“You playing with these guys?” John asked.

The boy shrugged.

“You want breakfast?”

Dean shook his head. No appetite. It was beginning. John was blind and lost himself, and in no position to guide anyone.

“Want to tell you about that boy I like,” Dean said.

“Okay.”

He stood, abandoning his self-appointed mission. Taking John’s hand, he walked toward the living room.

“Son, I’ve got—”

What? John racked his brain for a good excuse not to follow. Some responsibility that would call him away from wherever Dean was leading.

Once John was in his LaZBoy, Dean crawled onto his lap, curled up side-saddle, like a much younger child, cheek rested on daddy’s shoulder. For a moment, John felt fatherly and pure, and rejoiced that he was in the clear. He was the good dad he’d always strived to be, comforting and kind, until Dean shifted slightly and stirred up heat in John’s groin. Sunburst in his chest and electricity at the base of his spine.

“Son, maybe you should—”

“We used to do things,” Dean said. “Like… He let me do anything I wanted. And I did anything he asked me to.”

John’s imagination galloped into uncharted territory, so loud, he could hear the hooves. An image of his small son sucking his smaller son shouldn’t sit so well in his stomach.

“Like what?” he asked, knowing it was a mistake.

Dean kissed his father’s cheek. “Like this.”

He might as well have licked John’s cock. John’s veins blazed as his fingers curled tight around skinny ribs.

“Son.”

“That’s not all.”

There was no thought involved in kissing Dean’s neck. The boy jolted, gasped, and gripped his father’s hair. He began to rise and for a moment, John feared he’d run away. Prayed he would.

Only Dean didn’t run. He merely turned in John’s lap, so they were facing, knees tucked under John’s arms so the tiny tent in Dean’s briefs was pressed to his dad’s stomach and John’s hopelessly erect cock strained beneath three flimsy layers of fabric and Dean’s ass. Small, but not so tiny anymore. John kept his greedy hands on the armrests. No grabbing. No pushing. Whatever happened would be at Dean’s pace.

Whatever happened? Holy God, was he insane? To let any more than this happen was—

“Dad?”

John held his breath.

“Can you do that again?”

John curled his fists and nodded. Maybe Dean needed it. Of course he did. His brother. His mother. Gone. John could give a little more affection than usual. He’d be selfish not to.  
Not only could he kiss Dean’s neck again, but he could lick and nibble his way across the boy’s smooth white throat. Urge him closer with a palm at the base of his sweaty back. Let the other hand support Dean’s lolling head.

The boy panted and ground his thin hips. John had wondered whether he could possibly want this sober. He was liquifying into a molten puddle of Yes God Please.

In under two minutes, his elder son, his only son, was thrashing on his lap. His arms strung around John’s neck like a prize medal. A moan sprouted low in his throat, growing into a high, girlish whine.

“Oh, baby.”

Other trite, meaningless words fell from John’s lips, but he wasn’t writing poetry. He was falling in love. His body was coming alive after years of dormancy. His heart was setting itself to detonate in time with his tight balls. Dean’s thighs dangled over either side of the chair. He looked down, studying his own navel or the damp patch on his undies. A tangy-sweet odor drifted between them and made John salivate. 

His erection still raged beneath the luscious pressure of Dean’s weight. Between his cheeks. John’s internal dialogue waged World War Three. Stop this now. Never stop. Put him down. Pull him closer. A little more before you blow. If you come like this, you’re a monster.

Dean was perfectly silent except for soft, quick bursts of breath. John touched his chin, lifted his face.

“You okay?”

Bleary eyed and cheeks splotched red, the boy nodded.

“Let me hear some words.”

“I’m okay, Dad.”

“Did you like that?”

“Yeah.”

“You sure?”

The boy nodded again and wrapped his dad in the biggest hug his spindly arms could offer. Like Daddy coming home from work and his boys scampering across the floor to cling to his feet like a pair of love-starved pups. Dean nibbled John’s ear and an image of Mary flooded his mind, unbidden. Her face after an agonizing day of chasing half-feral boys, exhausted and unforgiving.


	3. Chapter 3

“It’s not fair! Why do I have to?”

It was unclear whether Dean’s pouting protest was at being nudged from his father’s lap, or the instruction to prepare his books. He and his dad had been cuddling and smooching all afternoon, getting high on endorphins. John felt like a freshly-molted snake.

It was time to get serious.

“Because you have to go back to school tomorrow,” John said. “Dr. Sherwood’s orders.”

“Dr. Sherwood can lick it.”

“Watch your mouth.”

The hospital psychologist’s single-visit advice was to maintain as normal a life rhythm for their son as possible. No two-week break to languish in his loss. Get him back in there among his peers. John wouldn’t have known what to do, and was grateful for the input.

“My brother just died. And I don’t give a shit about school.”

John stood from the creaky chair, reminding his son that he towered a foot overhead and was the boss here. “What do you think Sam would want you to do, huh? Sit around and —”

“Sam wants me to be happy. That’s all he ever says.”

John blinked. Sam’s name was bitter enough without the boy it belonged to responding or hearing it. Dean’s talk of him in the present tense tilted the world. John struggled to right himself in the new reality.

“Happy means going to school, getting good grades and —”

“All that stuff is bullshit. Sam says the only thing that matters is love.”

“Okay, well,” John said, scratching his head. “Then, you need to love school, because you’re going back in tomorrow.”

“I’m not.”

“Oh, you are, buddy. That much I promise you.”

Dean was getting big, but not too big. If necessary, John would resort to spanking. He was 16 years old the last time Ol’ Hank came at him with a belt. It had ended in a black eye and broken nose for Johnny, but a brand new mutual respect.

“Go shower.”

The boy rolled his eyes and made the wise decision to stop arguing.

While Dean was under the spray, John changed into a shirt that wasn’t damp with traces of his son’s spunk. He withdrew to the garage and busied his hands with arranging yard tools. Soon enough, Dean joined him. John glanced at the boy and away again. Dean was shirtless in jean shorts, damp hair plastered to his forehead. Too beautiful for words. Too lovely for John’s insane body not to react.

Dean leaned on a workbench and calmly picked up the conversation where they’d left off.

“No offense, Dad, but fuck school.”

John’s mouth fell open.

“Sam says it’s totally made up. And I’m sorry, but I think he knows better than you do.”

John’s mouth closed and his lips pursed as he considered how to respond.

Dean continued, “He says the whole system was invented to make people good at working in factories. Fuck that shit, man. I’m not some kind of machine.

At a loss for another reply, John asked, “What is with the language?”

Dean’s body language shifted from chest-jutting beligerence to the hip-slanted smirk of flirtatious audacity. “You say it.”

“You’ve never heard me say that word.”

Dean raised a brow. “You never said fuck?”

Cue John’s internal fireworks and speechless, slack-jawed awe. He was always the relaxed parent who privately allowed his boys to use profanity, but this is flagrant abuse of privilege.

“Sam says fuck is the most versatile word in the English language.”

If John ever held authority in this house or with this child, that was dwindling. Dean folded his arms.

“It’s a noun, such as I don’t give a fuck. An adjective such as fucked up…”

“All right. That’s it.”

“Also, a verb…”

“You need to go to your room.”

John pointed the way to the door that would lead the untrained child away from the garage where his father was on the verge of combustion. If he hovered much longer, the boy would be burned to ash.

“Such as —”

“Dean.”

“Daddy wants to fuck me.”

Time stopped. John’s heart skipped a few vital beats. He stood in the space created by his son’s grammar lesson wishing he could run, cry, or believably deny. He managed to feebly shake his head but Dean’s hands were already on his belt.

“I know you want to. Sam told me.”

“Dean, stop it.”

John swatted as if the boy’s fingers were a swarm of flies. Dean’s face scrunched in confusion.

“Don’t you want to?”

The correct answer was No. Loud and firm. Instead, John stood there blinking, like a mute idiot.

“Well, can I see it?”

Dean had seen his father’s penis, plenty of times. They weren’t a very conservative family. When Mary got a uptight about a swear word or a schoolyard boxing match, John put it into perspective. Boys.

But this. There’s no way to spin this anywhere near normal.

“You can see mine,” Dean offered.

His shorts were around his knees before John could even scream and make it stop.

John averted his eyes to the hedge clippers. “Son.”

“Dad, I know you want me. Stop, like... making me feel stupid.”

John breathed into both hands. “Would you pull up your pants?”

The willful child stepped out of them and waited with his hands at his sides.

“You need an outlet for your love and sorrow,” Dean said. “We both do.”

John shook his head at the meaningless psycho-drivel spewed from the mouth of a pre-teen whose favorite word was Dude. He must have heard that ‘outlet’ drabble from his mother, or Oprah.

The bravado crumbled all at once. Dean’s grimaced as if anticipating a burn. “This is wrong, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is, Dean. So please get dressed.”

Dean didn’t dress. He slowly broke into tears. Most of the words were garbled sobs, except for the last statement:

“I killed Sammy.”

“What? No. You did not kill Sam.” John gripped his shoulders.

“Yes, I did. I cursed him. I made him like me.”

“What does that even mean? You know what. I don’t want to know. You didn’t—”

“I knew it was wrong all along, and I did it anyway.” Dean hung his head. “Because I wanted to feel him. All of him, and on the inside.”

Mayday. If John’s body were a submarine he’d be taking in water. Horns blaring, red lights flashing

“And doing that made him sick. I know it did. Sam says it’s not that way, but—”

John hadn’t had a drop all day, intentionally, so he could control himself. This would be a good time for a beer. Or something stronger than beer. Turpentine would work.

“What if I did, Dad? What if I killed him by being like that? Making Sam do those dirty things. ... I licked his butthole.”

John closed his eyes, tried to unhear that.

“And he liked it. Like, a lot. Then he wanted it all the time. He farted in my face once, and after that I was like, hell, no. You nasty little skunk.”

“Nobody ever died from sex, Dean,” John said, clinging to the last strands of his composure. “Well, I mean, technically, there are diseases, but… that’s not what happened to your brother.”

“Why would the devil take him and not me?”

“Dean.” John’s throat was on fire, dry and hot. “Sam had cancer. That wasn’t your fault. No matter what you did. The devil is not real.”

“How do you know?”

“Even if he were real, he wouldn’t come after an 8-year-old or a 12 year old for a little experimenting.”

The devil would come for a 40-year-old whose son still hasn’t pulled up his pants.

“You don’t think it’s wrong?” Dean asked. “What I did?”

“I don’t. No, buddy.”

“I touched him every chance I got, Dad. I knew I couldn’t marry him or anything. That you wouldn’t let me, and like, everyone would be pissed, but…” Dean dragged his head back and forth, wailing, “I love him more than anything.”

“I know, son.”

“I don’t want to go to hell.”

John could strangle every fire and brimstone preacher in America.

“Son, you’re not going to fucking hell. Hell is not real, Dean. Heaven is not real.”

Dean’s jaw dropped. “Then where is Sam? Because Mom said he’s in Heaven with God.”

Who is also not real. Provable by the fact that John is having this conversation with one rather than both of his sons.

“Where is he? In the dirt?” Dean asked with wide, horrified eyes.

“He’s fine, Dean. Your brother is… Nothing hurts him anymore.”

“I know that, but where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“If there’s no God, then nothing we do is wrong?” Dean asked, brow raised with reasonable doubt.

The last time John had a talk like this he was in high school, at Herbie Wallace’s parents’ beach house, smoking all of the dude’s weed. In return, Herbie received the honor of Johnny Williams at his party. When was the last party grown up John had attended?  
The mighty do fall.

John gave his son the same answer he’d have used to mesmerize that crowd. His theology hadn’t evolved much since those days.

“Human beings decide what’s right and wrong.”

Dean stared at nothing for a while. Mouth open, blinking. Finally, he spoke:

“If it’s not wrong with Sam, then…”

Clever boy, with an argument for why John should whip out his dick.

“That’s not how that works, Dean. I’m…”

Thirty-seven years your elder. A hundred-fifty pounds heavier. A foot taller.  
Your father, for Chrissakes.

Dean chewed the corner of his lip, making his poor dad hungry for the whole pink mouth.

“I liked sharing bodies,” Dean mumbled.

“With Sam?”

Dean closed his eyes, squeezes them, nods. When they open again he says, “And with you.”

John lifted his little boy onto the work table, pulled his skinny legs around his waist and hooked his fingers under his thighs. He pressed their foreheads together, panting from the exertion of not taking more. The boy did the rest. As Dean closed the distance between them, John’s insides fluttered like he’d never been kissed. Their lips brushed and Dean suddenly pulled back.

“I’m sorry,” John said, unsure what he’d done wrong, besides the obvious.

Dean shook his head and touched his mouth. “Your beard.”

“Stubble.” John couldn’t help the smile. “Dealbreaker?”

Sam must have been so much softer. Even more baby fresh than Dean who felt like the first day of spring. Dean who cautiously leaned forward again and licked his father’s lips. John’s brain disintegrated to mush, hands riding up and down his son’s back of their own accord. Dean puckered and tried to kiss only mouth. He sat back and touched his lips.

“That stuff is really scratchy.”

“It’s hair. You know that, right? And that you’ll have it sooner than later.” John began shaving at 15. “Have you kissed anyone other than Sam?”

“He says we’re good for each other,” Dean said, deftly changing the subject. “He’s even smarter now than before.”

John lacked the cruelty to tell his son to stop pretending. Instead, he said, “I’d give anything to bring him back.”

Immediately, he realized that wasn’t entirely true. John would gladly die, but he wouldn’t have traded Dean’s life for Sam’s. That fact pierced his heart and in his guilt, he began to back away.

“Sam understands, Dad. He understands everything now.”


	4. Chapter 4

The last time John spoke with Sam was the last time Sam spoke. The last day he before they put in the breathing tube. 

On that day, a Thursday, John had been in the chair in the corner of the hospital room, reading the newspaper. The Beach Boys softly harmonized about Good Vibrations, because (and only because) that’s the music Sam liked best. If he hadn’t been wearing the oxygenator’s nasal cannula, John might have had to endure his out of tune howling. None of their family were great singers, but little Sam was by far the most painful to listen to.

Sammy was propped up in his bed, devouring a book on ancient civilizations. Reading reading always reading. Voraciously, undistractably reading. That was Sam. 

From the beginning, Dean was obedient, easy and fun. Sam was a colicky baby who grew into a moody, difficult, overly bright kid. He’d walked at 9 months, talked in complete sentences by a year and half, learned to read before pre-school. John could admit to himself that he was afraid the boy would outsmart him by the time he was 10. 

Sam was already smarter than all of them. He was the one who’d told his mother that something in his body wasn’t right.

In his hospital bed, with just his dad on watch, Sam looked up and rasped, “It was the aliens.”

The declaration had cost him a two-minute coughing fit, after which he pointed to a picture of the pyramids in Giza.

As the nurses rushed in, John has been so consumed with worry that he’d forgotten the statement that prompted the coughing in the first place. When the mayhem died down, Sam’s meaning finally clicked into his mind. 

It was just another thing to argue about. They’d never gotten along. Almost from the beginning. John just wasn’t good with the boy. It wasn’t until Sam was four that John realized it was because his younger son was one of the smartest people he’d ever met, age be damned. The kid’s overactive mind thrived on debate, especially when he ought to be quiet and accept authority. 

On that occasion, he’d said, “You know that’s a bunch of garbage, right?”

Sam whispered his arguments, and proofs, and as crazy as they were, John could only shake his head. He couldn’t disprove a word of it. 

Three days later Sam slipped into the coma. On his watches, John had whittled a small army of wooden camels, a few palm trees, and three five-inch pyramids. He’d set up his mini Egyptian habitat on Sam’s food tray, but the kid never saw it. Four weeks after that, they declared him brain dead and pulled the plug.


	5. Chapter 5

John slathered on his foam with a Taylor brush, the same brand Ol’ Hank used. That coincidence was an accident. Never. Not once, did John watch the old man shaving. He’d learned by bloody trial and error. 

Young Dean, however, had the benefit of not only perching on the bathroom counter to watch. He also possessed the confidence and the kind of father who’d allow him to commandeer the disposable razor.

John craned, exposing his neck to the inexperienced young barber. He holds his breath. Miraculously, Dean manages slow, careful scrapes without a single knick. In his peripheral vision, John watched his boy focus with his tongue peeking from the side of his mouth. After a few passes, John finished the job himself. 

He splashed his face clean with water. Dean’s palms rested soft as lotus petals on his cheeks. Absolutely worth it. 

The boy hopped down and John kissed his forehead, his nose. Pecked his lips.

“Can we watch ET?”

“Sure.” 

Dean used to say it was Sam’s favorite movie because Sam was from space. In the last month, it became Dean’s favorite, for equally obvious reasons.

The boy snagged a bag of chips and plopped in the center of his father’s lap. After torturously wiggling for a while, Dean settled on cuddling back on one arm like a smaller child, or a fairy tale princess. The perfect position for John to nuzzle his face, and whisper,” You’re so warm.”

He was. A little hotbox.

Dean always snorted when Elliott’s onscreen brother says, “penis breath.” Like he hadn’t heard it 600 times before. 

He pulled his dad’s arm around him and slowly, sneakily guided the hand toward his stiff little prick. 

While shaving, John vowed to himself to keep activities between his son and himself PG-13. That does not include heavy petting, bumping or grinding. In fact, it’s nothing below the shoulders. If they were young lovers in a film, he could, maybe, get away with sucking his boyfriend’s neck. 

In real life, no one would be okay with a movie that featured an adult man handling his son that way. They’d rate it MD for morally depraved. That thought halted John’s suckerfish impression. Dean pressed back against him, whining like a puppy who needed more petting.

John smiled and rubbed his face over Dean’s skin, pulling back the shirt’s collar to reach more.

“Mmmm. Daddy.”

Dean’s palm disappeared down his shorts, as he squirmed and shifted for better access. Suffering from acute overheating, John dropped his head back on the sofa and whispered a prayer of supplication.

“Touch me, Dad.”

The man’s hand hovered in mid air, muscles tight with want and wavering self-denial. Before he reached a decision, Dean grunted and lifted his hips and squirted into his own palm. Then, he slumped back against his old man’s heaving chest. 

“That’s it, buddy.” 

John hugged him tight, accidentally running across the fabric over a taut nipple. Dean inhaled sharply, followed by a gushed sigh. 

“More.”

John flicked his thumb over the tight bud, making a mental note he never intended to cash in. He troubled until Dean convulsed, shaking apart again, muttering, “Ohmy god. Oh my god, Daddy. Ohmygod.” 

“Yeah, baby. Right here.” 

John pressed his face into his sweaty mini idol’s hair and shed a few ravenous tears. 

They both slept.

The tape was rewinding when John awakened, pins and needles dancing down his numb arm. Dean’s head resting on his bicep. John gently carried his sleeping beauty upstairs. He walked the entire way with his nose pressed to Dean’s cheek, breathing him in, smiling in the warmth.

The moment he touched down on the bottom bunk, and with his eyes still closed, Dean proclaimed,  
“It’s only bad touch if I say no.”

John knelt beside the bed and accepted the wisdom, like wine, from the mouth of his babe. He rolled the flavor of the words on his tongue. Swallowed them whole, along with Dean’s spit and his own inhibition.

Head foggy with lust and dwindling uncertainty, John crawled onto the bed, on top of the blankets. Propped on his elbows and careful not to crush, he covered Dean with his body, grinding between pigeon-spread thighs. Eliciting only a pained groan in response.

“You okay?”

“My arms.” Dean croaked.

John leaned up to set them free from beneath the blanket. In return, Dean wrapped them around his dad’s neck, where they belonged. He scraped his fingernails over John’s scalp, sending tendrils of electricity snaking through the man's wired body.

An errant tear dropped onto Dean’s face, down his cheek and soaked into the pillow. Father tried to temper himself and not devour his beloved. Finally, unable to resist any longer, he crawled under the covers, spooned behind Dean, tenderly rolling against his son’s ass while fondling his small, stiff-again pecker. 

Thumbwidth, John’s middle finger length. A baby monster. 

Dean moaned and weaved every which way like a baby snake, unable to decide whether he wanted more of his father’s hand or more of the rod behind him. Gradually, his breath became more labored, his movements erratic until with a tiny squeak, he dribbled seed down his father’s fingers. 

“Fuck.”

It didn’t seem the right moment to correct the boy’s language. 

“That was awesome.”

“I’m glad you liked it.” John kissed Dean’s hair and willed his hips to still. 

A silence passed, long and thick-warm enough for the boy to be asleep. But Dean was the one who shattered it with a question:

“Are you and mom going to get a divorce?”

“I don’t know, son.”

“I want to stay with you.”

John held his tongue on the custom of courts that usually award custody to mothers. 

“Listen, Dean. About what you said.” John cleared his throat. “I don’t want to … fuck you, son.”

“Yes, you do.”

“I love you.”

“Don’t people always love each other when they fuck?”

John laughed and didn’t correct the darling assumption. “What I want is … My body is responding to yours in a new way. I don’t know why.”

“Because you want —”

“Dean. I want you to be safe and happy.”

“I am happy,” he said and rolled over to look into his father’s eyes. “Like I never thought I’d be again.”

No one had ever seen boys so close. Sam and Dean looked nothing alike, had nothing in common but their parents. Yet, everybody knew they were brothers. Could see it in the way Sam stared up at Dean, and how the big boy looked out for the little one. 

Years ago, without thinking, Mary had asked what they’d do when Dean went off to college. His instant answer was that he’d either take Sam, or he wouldn’t go.

John felt like he’d lost a limb when Sam died. Dean was, somehow, functioning without a vital organ. He held his son closer. 

“Can we go to your bed?” Dean asked. “It’s bigger.”

The queen bed where John and Mary had conceived both of their boys. Where they’d held each other, whispering about John’s pink slip and their lost health insurance. He’d sincerely loved that woman. Still did. 

He also hadn’t been back in that bed since months before the funeral, when she’d asked him to sleep downstairs. John didn’t have it in him to argue when he didn’t even have a stiff one to stick in her. 

“No,” he answered Dean. “You go to sleep. I’m going to go down and watch some TV.”

He stood. Dean caught his hand, tried to keep him in the bed. “Kong?”

“No Kong tonight. You sleep.”

“Kiss?”

John chuckled and smooched the boy’s forehead. Dean tilted back his head, puckered and angled for his father’s lips. He rubbed John’s smooth cheeks. “The prickles are already coming back.”

With a soft smile, John gave his son a soft kiss. 

“Good night, Dad.”

“Night, boy.”


	6. Chapter 6

John thought of calling his brother, Tommy. Not that they spoke often, but all his friends had been work buddies who’d mutually cut each other off after the downsizing. All’s fair.

Tommy had been decent enough to fly in from Cleveland for Sam’s funeral. He might even still be at the hotel. Janet would know. Assuming Tom was still with Janet. John hadn’t heard anything to the contrary. They could go grab a beer, like they’d been saying since the old man croaked. Just never got around to it.

John got as far as lifting the receiver and dialing in the area code.

What was he going to say?

_Hey look, I’m having a pretty rough time here. You know how I let the one kid die? Yeah, well, I been making out with the other one. No. No tongue, yet. You got any tips for that?_


	7. Chapter 7

The following morning, John peered over his quarter-acre estate: a tiny sliver of the American pie, identical to the others on the block. More of an apple seed than a full dessert but it was his.  
Sort of.  
He was buying it back from the bank. Those fuckers could and would jerk it away if he didn’t make the payment next month.  
None of that was the point.

The point is that in the last month, he’d let it grow over into a jungle wasteland.

None of the neighbors complained. This was a place where folks intermittently looked out for each other and minded their own damn business. Doug Kirby, two houses down, had mowed John’s lawn the first week after Sam went into the hospital. 

They all know that Williams’ youngest boy is dead. They may not know his wife was gone.

Suffice it to say, grass had not been John’s highest priority. However, on the third Saturday in September, two days after they put Sam under the ground, John showed his older son… his only son… how to start the lawnmower and row in straight rows while John manned the clippers.

Dean would have already been helpful years ago. In fact, he’d asked, but the yard was one of John’s few refuges. Work, the basement, the lawn. Four years earlier, he’d honored Mary’s request that he stop drinking (so much). It had cost John his Marine Corp and college buddies. So, now, his social life consisted of power tools. Working on the lawn,  
keeping his hands busy always eased his trouble mind.

While Dean was mowing the backyard, Melinda Bradshaw waddled out of her front door brandishing a dish that could only contain casserole. The freezer was stocked to the brim with casseroles.  
Melinda hadn’t been at the funeral, though. In fact, the last John had seen of Melinda was at a barbecue in their yard when the woman got so sloshed she’d tried to sit in the wrong lap - namely John’s - with her husband and Mary within freaking out distance.

This was before Sam got sick, though she must have seen the late night ambulance arrivals, and watched through her window as the boy dwindled to skin on bone. 

Did she know that Mary was gone? Probably. News travels fast for women like this.

“I’ve been meaning to do this for ... well, you know how it is, with everything and the kids,” Mary said tossing her artificially-red hair over her shoulder.

She placed the tray in John’s dirty hands and rested her soft fingers on his arm. Her name was Sharpied in cursive along the top and the Pyrex bottom.

“You can put that right in the microwave, the dish washer…”

“Thanks.”

“Any time, honey.”

The entire offer was not lost on John. That’s what he needed: a woman. Any woman. Mary had abandoned him in a time of despairing need and knocked John’s libido into reverse orbit.

Dean took the dish from his hand, peeled open the plastic lid and turned up his nose. The snicker escaped John’s mouth before he could stop it. He balanced the slip with a slap on the back of the boy’s skull.

“That’s your dinner, pup. So, say thank you.”

Dean grumbled a gratitude and stood between his father and their neighbor’s elbows like he was waiting to translate.

“Well, like I said,” Melinda said, waved and ambled across the street.

John watched her ass because she had a nice, wide one. Dean smacked his chest.

“What?”

“You like her?”

“She’s crazy,” John answered truthfully.

“But you think she’s hot?”

Crazy girls are always good in bed: scientific fact. The question was whether Dean was protecting the territory for his mom, or...

“Are you jealous?”

“No. I think you should go fuck her.” Dean handed over the dish and started to run after Melinda.

“What are you doing?”

Dean turned, walking backwards as he explained, “I’m going to hook you up.”

“Get back here. Now.”

The boy stood in the middle of the street, head cocked, visibly debating.

“Now!”

He returned slowly with folded his arms.

“Not funny.”

“Whatever.” 

Dean sauntered back to the mower.

By the time the afternoon storm hit, Williams and son had transformed the yard into a tidy, respectable lot. 

Dean showered without being told. Always was a cleanly boy. A raccoon in a former life, as Mary used to say. One with three stomachs. But he refused to touch Melinda’s casserole. Ate chips out of the bag instead, like a heathen.

“You know,” Dean leaned back against the cabinets, elbow on the counter. “When we do it, we got to use like a ton of some slick stuff. To make it slide in easier.”

John blinked at his worldly wise child, breath halted for a moment. He made the pact with himself and then out loud to the boy, “It’s never going that far.”

Dean rolled his eyes and stared into his bag of chips. 

John took a bite of the casserole, made it through one chew before he put down the fork. He swallowed out of a sense of decency.

Dean smirked and crunched. “Gross, isn’t it?” 

“No worse than your mom’s.”

John ate another forkful to prove something - though he wasn’t sure what. Dean put the bag on the counter and hopped up beside it. “You talk to her?”

“Your mom?” John shook his head. 

He crossed the kitchen and grabbed a couple chips from the bag. Dinner. 

“I promised to give her space,” John explained.

“What does that even mean?”

“If you think this is easy on any of us —”

“Sam says she’s at Aunt Susan’s.”

John fell silent. Of course, Mary was at her sister’s place on Lake Michigan. He hadn’t even asked where she was going. But how on earth Dean had put that together…

Extra sensory, paranormal, all that is far-fetched. But if John were going to believe it would be in Sam communicating with Dean from the other side. They were young enough to be malleable. And young enough for Dean to invent or imagine the whole thing. 

“You think I’m making this up?” 

“I didn’t say that.”

“He said you would say that.”

“I didn’t say that,” John said, wishing the conversation was over.

“He also said to tell you that it’s okay. He loves you, too.”

Even if there weren’t a hockey puck in his throat, John wouldn’t ask what that meant.

“And he told me to do this.”

Dean tugged his father’s shirt, drew him in. Boy elevated on the counter. Dad between his legs. What began as a fond embrace quickly heated as the boy scooted closer and locked his ankles around John’s waist like a sweet memory from high school. Wrists clasped behind John’s neck, Dean kissed him. Pulled him even closer.

“I love you too, Dad.”

To do more than nod would cost John dearly. Bits of emotion, sharp with jagged edges, caught in his throat. Blocked his vocal cords. Dean wiped a tear from his cheek.

“He also said that you were wrong about Egypt. Whatever that means.”

Egypt. God.

Dean wouldn’t know. Couldn’t know. John was the last one to hear Sam’s voice. He’d never told anyone.

The boy didn’t give his dad time to wallow in his bewilderment. He hopped down from the counter and lowered his pajama pants. Without thinking, as if they’d been doing this forever, John dropped to his knees. He grabbed his son’s hips and curled his tongue around the small, stiff prick, rolling Dean’s taut balls with his bottom lip.

What began as tight, controlled thrusts quickly grew into frantic spasms. John held on a bit longer, savoring the bitter salt of Dean’s essence.

Two years earlier… Hell, two days earlier, John Williams would not have believed he’d ever taste another man’s seed. This was a few light years beyond that disbelief.

He gazed up at the rising and setting son. The one true god. His little boy’s belly still heaving.  
John stood and kissed him. Dean righted his pants and said, “Okay, my turn.”

He tried to kneel, but John blocked his attempt. “No.”

“What?”

“Surely, you’ve heard that word before.”

“That’s not fair, Dad.”

“Well, that’s how it is.” 

With that final word, John left the kitchen with a whining boy at his elbow.

“Dad?”

“Case closed, son.”

Dean skipped around and stationed himself front and center in the hall. “We have to do stuff that feels good to you, too.” 

“Listen, I’m happy if you’re happy.”

“That’s bullshit,” Dean said.

“Could we pretend I’m still the parent?”

“Bull crap, then.” Dean rolled his eyes. “If two people are like ... doing it, they’re both supposed to get off.”

“Where do you get this stuff?”

“Isn’t that true?”

John didn’t argue.

“So, like... what can I do for you?”

“You can drop it.”

“Dad… I’m sorry, but you’re being a jerk right now,” Dean said. “I just want to see how much jizz you make.”

If there were words, John didn’t have them. All he could manage was a stunned chuckle.

There, in the middle of the hall, Dean took it upon himself to loosen his father’s pants and pull his half-rigid cock from his pants. John made no attempt to stop him.

“Wow.”

John was well-endowed. He’d heard that word about his package, but never from this boy.

Dean used both of his small hands to stroke a few times, pulled away his hand to admire the clear webbing of pre-come between his fingers. “It’s like snot.”

“I guess it is.”

The boy sniffed, then licked his middle finger and turned up his nose.

“Better or worse than Mrs. Bradshaw’s casserole?”

“I didn’t try it, remember? You tell me.” Dean stood and offered John a taste.

“About the same.”

Dean laughed. Then he dropped a sweet kiss on the tip. John froze watching as his little boy peppered kisses along one side of the shaft, then the other. 

“Dean.”

“It’s okay, Dad. Let me do this for you.”

He proceeded to give the sloppiest, least finessed, hottest blowjob John had experienced in his adult life. On enthusiasm alone, hardly anything compared.

He hummed and slurped and licked and rubbed his face in John’s balls. He sucked like a newborn calf - as if survival relied on it. Tried to stick his tongue into the slit. Dean rested on his calves and smiled, impossibly pretty with tears and spit glistening on his face.

With that inspiration, John took matters in hand. When he was about to blow, he squeezed the base of his cock.

“Son, I’m gonna come.”

Dean nodded. “Yeah. Let me see it.”

If John was going to hold off any longer, Dean’s eagerness made it impossible. A groan ripped through him as he let loose all over the boy’s chin and chest. Dean flinched and his mouth fell open, a final rope landing on his lower lip.

“Whoa. Dude.”

Dean stared down at his chest, apparently afraid to move. The apology froze on John’s tongue. Instead of speaking, he blinked at his handiwork: beautiful cum-covered boy. Another shudder racked his bones.

“You happy?”

Dean nodded like he’d just received a brand new scooter.

John laughed. “You’re nuts. But thank you.”

“For what?”

“For... you know how this feels.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, so. Thank you.”


	8. Chapter 8

John carried the boy to his bed, once again, silently vowing to take things no further. He lay beside his son, melting into the kiss until Dean's fingers wandered from John's neck southward. John placed a hand on his chest, creating a small chasm between them.

“That’s enough, son.”

The boy inhaled deeply, creased his brow and frowned. “Would it be easier if I call you John?”

“Why would that be easier?”

“Instead of Dad,” Dean said. “Like equals.”

“But we’re not equals.”

“Of course, we are.”

“I’m your father.” The Star Wars quote was accidental.

“Yeah,” Dean continued, “But were both people.”

Just as John’s temper was beginning to rise, he recognized it for what it was: a classic Sam argument.

“It was his idea,” Dean said, as if reading his father’s mind.

“You call me Dad.”

“I think Sam’s point is—”

“Enough, okay? Really,” John finally broke. “Enough about Sam. Enough… with everything. You can stay in my bed, if you behave.”

Dean sucked his teeth, rolled on his back and sulked at the ceiling.

“Or you can go sleep in your room.”

“You just don’t care at all, do you?”

“About?” John asked.

“What happens. What I want. How I feel.”

“You sound like a teenager.”

Dean stood up on the bed, stripped himself bare except for tennis socks. He tossed his clothes on the floor. John possessed enough self control not to touch, but not to keep his eyes from running the length. His son was also looking down his body at his belly or his hardening little dick.

“Do you think I look good?”

John swallowed and nodded. “You’re beautiful.”

Both boys always were. From the moment they entered the world, slime-coated and with misshapen skulls. Even Sam in the end, emaciated and grey, with sunken eye sockets and flaky lips, was still absolutely perfectly beautiful.

Dean still had his summer tan. The outline of his swim trunks light against his honeyed skin. Dangling between childhood and maturity like a piece of unripe, yet delectable fruit. Toned and slim. Defined and slight.

And far from shy. He squatted on the center of his father’s chest. John touched his cheek.

“What is it you expect me to do here?”

“Whatever you want, Dad.”

John braced himself through the shock to his system. This had already gone too far.

He wanted. Desperately. Violently. He shook with want without allowing his boy to see it. What Dean saw was a man with his hands gently rested on his son’s forearms. A man whose face was composed while his brain was a broken record harping:

Whatever you want.  
Whatever you want  
Whatever you want

Dean held his father’s hand to center of his chest, bumpy with gooseflesh. He shivered and waited.

As if he knew. Like a farmer with seeds that only require sun and water and time.  
John’s hand drifted of its own accord, fingers slotting between Dean’s ribs. Thumb brushing over his nipple. The shivers grew into a moan. 

Whatever you want.

John curved a hand around Dean’s neck and pulled him close.  
He wants two diametrically opposed outcomes. One desire is programmed into every man’s DNA: fill the nearest warm hole. Own the most beautiful, precious, priceless treasure. Ravage. Possess.

He also wants to keep his one remaining son safe from this cruel, evil world of which he is the most dangerous part.

“I want…”

“I know, Dad,” Dean said. “I’m already yours.”

John sniffed. Refused to cry.

“I thought I would only ever be Sammy’s, but I’m yours now. He says it’s okay.”

John kissed him to stop the madness. He pulled Dean flat onto his chest. It took a bit of finagling and arranging to shuffle his silk PJ pants down and kick them off. With an arm around his son’s waist, John asked, “Whatever I want, Dean?”

“Yeah. Dad. Anything”

Amazed by his own body's prompt response again so soon, John took the boy's word as gospel. He slicked himself with spit and slotted between slender thighs. His other hand gripped Dean’s tight little ass, held him still, while beneath him John’s hips strained ever heavenward.

“Cross your ankles, son.”

The boy obeyed. The pressure increased to near perfection as John groaned and strained, rose and fell.

“Aw, Dad.”

That was Dean’s only warning. His body spasmed, released warm wet between their bellies. John redoubled his speed and within a few minutes, had followed his little boy into the bliss. Both breathing deeply, smiling, damp and sated.

When they awakened, Dean was still snuggled close, a thigh over John’s middle when he said, “Tell me about your first time.”

John chuckled. What to tell?

“I was a little older than you are now. She went to my school. I liked her more than she liked me,” he said and left it at that. “What about you?”

Was this conversation really happening? John stroked the down on his son's arm, wondering if he'd grow as hairy as his old man. Likely not. Dean would probably remain fair like Mary, and relatively bare.

“Um… It was with Sammy,” he said.

John figured and hoped as much.

“I guess he was… Are you going to be mad?”

“No.” John was too loose for anger.

“He was about six,” Dean said softly. “We’d been kissing and touching, just because it felt good, you know. I'd heard this kid on the bus talking about sucking dick and I asked Sam if he would try it."

John nodded.

"He was my best friend. He didn’t say no.”

Nothing Dean said was terribly surprising.

“Once I figured out how to … stick it in his butt, I never wanted it out. Neither did he.”

John wasn’t fully prepared for that. Even less so for the next confession.

“I fucked him every night, Dad. Sometimes in the morning, too, if we weren’t too sleepy. He liked it if I talked to him. He’d open his legs even wider, beg me to kiss him.” Dean shook his head like an old man reminiscing. “He was so good, Dad. I wish you could have felt him, too.”


	9. Chapter 9

The following afternoon, the Williams men ordered pizza and played Kong for hours. Dean owned other games, but Kong is the only one that didn’t give his dad a headache. As usual, John got his digital butt whooped. Eventually, he paused for an indefinite beer break.

By Dean’s suggestion, they watched ET again. Probably the sixth time they’d started watching it since the funeral, three days prior. Dean still laughed, gasped and cried in all Sam’s spots. He spoke along with every line Elliott said, like Sam used to do.

Dean watched the movie. John watched the boy, heart aching with loss and swollen with love. A week ago, he hadn’t believed anything would ever outweigh the agony of losing Sam.

John rested a hand on Dean’s neck. The boy leaned back into it and went on pretending he was in the film, the way Sam used to do.

For the first time, John leaned over and planted a peck on his son’s cheek. When . Dean smiled but didn’t turn, John’s want surged. He dragged the boy into his lap, kissing him like it was his last act.

“Whatever I want?”

Dean smirking mouth glistened with John's spit. “You’re the dad.”

“No. Not like that. Do you feel like that? Did I make you feel that way?”

“No, man. Chill out.” The boy touched his father’s face. “I like it. I want more.”

John nodded, letting that request sink in.

So, as ET built his makeshift mobile phone, John slid a finger into his elder son’s warm mouth.

A random thought: he had no rubbers. Hadn’t been with anyone other than this boy’s mother in over 15 years. The bigger question was whether he’d actually follow through with it.  
After all, Dean didn’t know what he was asking for. But he sure was dedicated. He lifted John’s shirt over his head and hurled it onto the floor. “You act like you’ve never done this, Dad.”

“I have never done this.”

At least not with Dean. The whole experience made him quiver like a virgin.

“Just pretend I’m mom.”

“Yeah. I don’t think so.”

“What? Because I don’t have tits?”

“Because you’re an eleven-year-old boy, and you’re my son, and your mother is my wife.”

John gently pushed him aside and stood.

“Oh, don’t start this crap again.” Dean knelt on the couch. “I’m sick of it. If you want me, come do this now. Otherwise, just leave me alone, you … stupidhead.”

Leave him alone. That was the correct choice. No questions asked.

John made it to the door, over the threshold, into the hall before he realized that Dean possessed more presence of mind than some of the adults he’d slept with. Maybe that’s because half of them were drunk, including Mary most of the times they were together.

John turned, stood at the door, fingers twiddling on his thighs. Dean lay on his back, one hand low on his belly, the other palming his crotch. Only a brief moment more of hesitation before John crossed the room and wrestled the little tease out of his jeans. Dean grinned, lifting his hips to help, just as he had as a toddler.  
Same kid. Very different situation.

“You’re really doing it?”

“I fucking need it,” John told them both.

As if Dean was air, John needed his face between his thighs, inhaling his faint musk, melting his tongue into his deliciously tight, reluctant core. Slender legs trembling against his jaws. Dean’s hands, his whole body, urged after John, strained to draw him closer as he licked and gently delved into his boy's fuzz-covered, pink entrance. Reveling as Dean relaxed. Marveling as his hole clenched and released beneath a carefully circling thumb.

“That good?”

Dean nodded and gasped as his hole swallowed the right pointer finger to the first knuckle.

“Oh, wow. What is that?”

“A finger.”

“A finger?” Dean asked. “Just one? Wow.”

“We don’t have to—”

“No. It’s just… Wow.”

“How does it feel?”

“It’s… It’s a lot.”

“Let’s take it easy for a little while.”

A little while turned out to be over an hour of wrestling, tickling and kissing. Dean ran upstairs and returned with Vaseline. He globbed a ton of it onto, around and into his hole while John watched with equal parts fascination and horror.

Before long, Dean was rocking back on three of his daddy's fingers. Panting for more. Tears streaming down his face, he took a breath and whispered, “Dad, when are you going to fuck me?”

Eleven years, John had prided himself on being a family man. Doting father. Faithful husband. In this one moment, he could shatter all that dedication and became something else. Like a butterfly. Or a child rapist. Or a lover to his son.

Those identities chased him, challenging, daring him to fulfill the boy’s wish. Dean lay on his back, thighs spread, arms tucked under his up-drawn knees. Holding himself wide open like a gift.

John had barely aligned at his entrance when Dean began wheezing like he was being split in two. John pulled back.

“What?” Dean sat up. “Why?”

“It’s too much.”

“Dad?” he whines, clasped his ankles around John’s back and dragged him forward. “Quit being such a bitch.”

John had forbidden his older son from using that word against the younger, even when it rang true. Only in that moment, with Dean addressing him that way, did it fully dawn on John that he was a surrogate. That Dean needed this connection more than he did.

John held his breath and plunged until the head of his cock was squeezed by his son’s incredibly tight, but yielding hole. Tight wasn’t really an adequate word. Dean fit like a second skin. Fireworks blinked behind John’s eyes, along his spine, threatening to detonate in his balls. They both froze for a long moment. Silent except for the labored breathing.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” Dean panted. “Yeah. God. You’re so big.”

John dropped his face onto Dean’s hair. His first time in so long. There’d be no pounding or hammering. Just waiting until Dean was ready to move. Once he’d adjusted, the boy did not disappoint. He dug his heels into his father's back and inched up his hips, hissing as if with equal parts pleasure and pain. The kid knew his body. Knew what he was looking for: slowly working with slack-jawed concentration.

How long had he been playing with Sam? How far had they gone? Was it play for them? Was this purely physical release for John?

It was no one night stand. But it was different than it ever was with Mary. She was a different kind of lover: cautious, overly aware of herself. Despite her beauty, or maybe because of it, she seemed afraid to take risks, try new things, to exit the fairy tale. Then, they’d started to drink and that loosened the marital sex into a sloppy sideshow for years. Then Mary sobered up, and…

John clamped down on the thoughts of her.

He focused every ounce of his attention on the boy writhing beneath him. Staring up with glimmering emerald eyes. Both hands on John’s face.

“Do it, Dad.”

‘It’ could only mean that Dean wanted John to move. John, who hadn’t been inside of anyone in over half a year. John, who no longer trusted his self-control. He propped on his elbows, bit his lip and eased deeper, groaning with the effort required not to unleash fury.  
To not punish Dean for his request.

“Dad. It’s okay.”

It was not okay. The heat brewing in John’s veins had to be contained or there could be damage. Rather than give over to his body’s urge, John gazed at his gorgeous, determined, little boy. If Dean wanted something, he went for it. 100%. He'd always been that way. On and off the soccer field. He wasn't the greatest student, but he showed up, and worked hard. His teachers rewarded him for effort and for his natural charm. He had the makings of a great man. A leader. And John was proud as hell to call him son. It was an honor to squeeze his eyes shut, and without a single violent thrust, to unload in his perfect hole.

He remained there inside him while Dean twisted and jerked and snaked out his own release. Then John laid back and pulled the boy onto his chest, letting the jizz gel between them and leak from Dean’s bottom. It would stain the sofa and always be there to remind John of this moment.

“You all right?”

“I’m fine, Dad.”

“That didn’t—”

“It was awesome.”

Onscreen, the scientists quarantined the little alien while John tried to convince himself he hadn’t just wrecked his son.

“You used to do that with Sam?”

Dean nodded.

“Every day?”

Dean nodded again. “Except I was the one inside. I figured the big one should always —”

“Not necessarily,” John argued before he’d measured the meaning of his words.


	10. Chapter 10

24 hours later, John carried his sleepy lover upstairs. They slept entwined until well after midnight, when Dean awoke for a bathroom emergency.

The Raccoon returned to the bed, freshly washed and carrying the Vaseline.

“You should lay on your stomach, Dad.”

John’s brow raised, he huffed out a groggy chuckle, then complied. 

The cold Vaseline nipped. Dean’s finger was small, but bigger than anything else that ever invade John Winchester’s nether regions. The man broke out in a fine sheen of sweat, breathing through his mouth. 

“How the hell did you take me?” John asked.

“Practice.”

Before long, the impatient boy had upgraded to something larger and more rigid. 

“Ahhh! Son. Take it easy, Jesus. What is that?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

But worry wasn’t optional with godknowswhat ramming in and out of his bottom. John clenched his teeth, tried (and failed) to relax his hindparts.

“What the hell is that, Dean?” He twisted for a peek.

Pink.  
Buzz.  
John leapt to his hands and knees and swatted the whatever-it-was out of Dean’s hands.  
A dildo 

“Where on earth did you —”

“It’s one of mom’s.”

One of. Delightful. Never again. 

“Okay,” Dean said. “You should be ready.”

John shook his head. Whose bad idea was this anyway? His bottom was already burning. That was enough experimenting for a lifetime.

“You said… I mean, if you don’t…” Dean shrugged. “Whatever, dude.”

John sighed, grimaced and re-assumed the position, flat on his belly. 

Dean’s cock was smaller, but the boy was not nearly as conscientious about his methods. It would be generous to describe Dean’s movements as a method at all. His pecker barely long enough to penetrate, he thrashed around his dad’s back for a couple minutes, entering the well-greased hole from time to time. More often, he poked his father’s perineum and the sensitive flesh above John’s anus. 

“Son. Son, take it easy.”

There was no time for Dean to heed the advice. With a shudder and a sigh, he spurted wet warmth between his dad’s cheeks, flopped down and began sobbing.

Before John could question or comfort him, Dean began mumbling, “I know. I know. I just miss your body. I miss touching you.”

“Dean,” John whispered. “Son, we don’t have to do this, or anything like it, ever again”

“It’s not that, Dad. I just… If he was here. If his body was here, we could all play together. Like this… it’s good. It’s just different.”

John subdued the fiery twinge. Refused to let his inane jealousy become words. He nodded and lay perfectly still beneath his boy, letting Dean’s tears slide down his neck.


	11. Chapter 11

Dean’s idea. 100%.

If it were up to John, they’d have stayed safe in the house.  
After nearly a week of only leaving the bed to shower, play video games, or watch ET, Dean suggested they go out.

“Out where?”

“Out, out,” was the answer. “Anywhere.”

John racked his brain for places they could carry on their affair in isolation. Dean shot down the hunting/camping trip idea and recommended, "something else." So, John found himself folded nearly in half, steering the tiny wheel between his thighs, trying like hell to ram into the side of his son’s flame-painted bumper car.

“I’ll get you, little devil.”

After a few hundred severe wrecks, Dean insisted on cotton candy.

“You do realize that stuff is disgusting,” John said, tickled by his son’s evident joy in eating it.

“It’s delicious.”

“It’s awful.”

“You’re only saying that because you’re old.”

John laughed. “I’m saying it because it’s nothing but stale sugar and chemicals.”

Dean pinched off a piece. “Eat it.” His lips shone electric blue. “Just taste it.”

John squirreled away. “I’ve tasted cotton candy, son. I don’t like it.”

“Just try this one.”

To shut him up, John caught Dean’s skinny wrist and licked between the pinched thumb and index. Dean’s mouth parted, as if he hadn’t expected his father’s tongue wrapped around his fingers. John glanced around their bench and made sure they had no audience before he sucked the noxious mess from the tip of Dean’s thumb. This behavior was, he told himself, arguably normal for a very intimate family.

“Happy?”

Dean nodded, squirming in his seat. “You like it?”

“No. It’s too sweet.”

“Too sweet? How can something be too sweet?”

The boy harped on, following his dad along the asphalt, extolling the dubious virtues of cotton candy. He curved an arm around his father’s elbow like a mini-date. Pressed his face to John’s tricep, nuzzling.

John had a tightening sense it was too much. He searched the crowd for reference. What was proper, acceptable father/son touch? In a week, his perspective had irrevocably skewed. There were other, smaller boys, holding parents’ hands. Some on shoulders. To be safe, John shrugged him off, made the boy stand upright.

No one appeared to be looking at them. They were an hour’s drive away from home, but why take chances? Why draw attention?

On second study, John noticed that most of the other kids were preschoolers. Of course. Boys Dean’s age were in school. How did he not think of that? His entire worldview was off. Doing Dean was burning brain cells like snorting cocaine.

If there had been any of Dean’s peers, John doubted they’d stand quite as near. He had to repeatedly gently nudge Dean away.

Suddenly antsy about the entire excursion, John began to seek the nearest exit. Dean, however, grabbed his hand and pointed at a rollercoaster. John yanked away and scanned their perimeter for witnesses. Dean frowned, handed his father the cotton candy stick and ran off toward the Cobra.

_John, what are you doing man?_   
_Get a grip._   
_It’s an outing. Nothing weird is going on._   
_If anyone asks, his brother just died. Trying to raise his spirits. It’s not even a lie._

He ran a hand through his hair and waved back to his eagerly bouncing son.

As their car approached the top of the Cobra, Dean gripped his dad’s thigh. John burned to kiss him. He’d been aching with the want for hours.

Dean leaned up to whisper, “Our house is that way.”

“How do you —”

“Sam told me.”

Dean kissed John's ear, setting him on fire with a warm, slimy tongue, just as the bottom dropped out of his stomach and he joined the screaming masses.

When that infernal madness was over, Dean scurried off to play skeeball. Then, he wanted Whack-a-mole, and for John to shoot at ducks and win him something.

Poor John’s belly grumbled around the two chili dogs he never should have had in the first place. His discomfort was not hunger, or indigestion. Pure nerves. He couldn’t stop looking over his shoulder. Couldn’t stop thinking about the crimes he’d committed. Evils that didn’t feel wrong anymore, until he imagined someone else finding out. Then he wanted to choke on vomit and die.

“Son, we need to go home.”

“Ten more minutes.”

Turned into another hour.  
Then, Dean was tugging John’s fingers, leading him toward the dance tents.

Inside, they found a few retired couples dancing to recorded music. Dean was already two-stepping to the fiddle and banjo tune. John raised a brow. He might have risked dancing in public with a daughter. Certainly not with his son.

The other tent featured a full band with full, grey beards - oldtimers who must do this for kicks. But they were damn good, and a caller lead a line dance. There were only about twenty people dancing, but this was better. Safer.  
John and Dean stood side by side, occasionally stealing glances and grins at each other across the room.

Eventually, Dean was being flounced around by a woman twice John’s age. John’s third dance partner couldn’t have been more than 18. Why wasn’t she in school? Soft. Smelled nice. Just as John was getting comfortable, Dean grabbed his sleeve and dragged him to the door. He didn’t stop until they were behind the tent between large, noisy generators.

“What is it, son?”

Dean studied his tennis shoes. “Do you love me?”

“More than anything, boy.”

Dean gripped his father’s shirt. “You haven't kissed me all day.”

John looked around. They were well-hidden and the fair was relatively sparsely attended.

“Kiss me, Dad.”

“Son, you do realize…”

Dean sighed, shook his head and began to sulk away.

Was this what they did? Dean and Sam. Seek out private places to sneak away and kiss and pledge their undying love. John’s little lunatic sons. The difference was that Sam was tiny, and could hide in small spaces, and wouldn’t go to jail for what Dean was asking.

Before he could get away, John caught his boy’s arm and dragged him close enough to breathe onto his parted lips. “I have always loved you more than anything. And you know that.”

The kiss was neither long, nor deep, but Dean smiled into it, melting his father into a puddle in the palm of his hand.


	12. Chapter 12

On the following night, Dean introduced his dad to the magic of 69. Of course, John was already familiar with the position, but it had been so long since Mary was open to that. So long since John even tried to initiate anything with her. It was like the first time.

Hell, everything with Dean was that way. John was virginal and cautious with his boy guiding the pace and calling the steps. John would never again deny him anything. Wouldn’t resist. Would gratefully give Dean whatever he wanted.

That included bacon in bed the next morning.

John was buck naked, cooking and whistling when the front lock clicked. As the door squeaked open, a glob of grease popped into a patch of hair in the center of his chest. He howled and was patting himself with a drying towel when Mary Campbell Williams entered the kitchen. Instinctively, he held the rag over his crotch, as if she’d never seen what he was hiding.

Mary’s eyes slowly trailed south to north, but without any trace of heat. One brow was raised in surprise, but she didn’t even appear amused as she pointed to the pink, first-degree burn under John’s fur. "What the hell, John? Where are your clothes?"

"Oh, I, uh..." A few second passed before he regained the presence of mind to shout, “Dean! Your mother’s home.”

Mary frowned at the announcement.  
It was a little odd. But no stranger than John stepping in Mary’s way, blocking her path to the steps. He wrapped his arms around her neck and murmured, “I’m so glad you—”

She shoved him away. “You smell awful.”

With the spatula in one hand and the rag in the other, John tucked his nose under his pit. No contest.

“Just having you back here is—”

“John, get out of my way.”

John did not get out of her way. He stood at the bottom of the stairway, choosing weird behavior over the possibility of his wife finding their cum-splattered son in their semen-soaked bed. Before Mary could completely lose her cool, Dean appeared at the top of the stairs with damp hair and a small smile.

“Hey, Mom.”

The boy walked slowly, gingerly, down the steps and into his mother’s arms.

John added an order of over-easy eggs and made them all breakfast. Before she’d cleared her plate, Mary grasped Dean’s hand. “Listen, I… I owe you an apology. I should have spoken to you before I left. It’s just, with everything, I needed… Do you understand?”

Dean nodded at her nonsensical statement.

“How is school?”

He looked to his father. John could ask him to lie. The boy would understand the sign, any sign. He’d get it. Their asses would be covered. John’s ass mostly. Dean’s the kid. John’s the adult here.

“Don’t tell me Mrs. Jenkins is giving you trouble,” Mary said. “Was there a test? Spelling?”

Dean winced. John nodded the okay for honesty. Mary looked between them and waited.

“He hasn’t… really, been back,” John said.

“How is that…” She gawped. “It’s been 9 days. What have you been doing?”

Dean shrugged and gave the only plausible answer: “Grieving?”

Miraculously, Mary didn’t yell or confront John at that moment. She took her bags upstairs and scowled at the funky odor and messy bed. She bent and peeked beneath the bed, but didn’t speak or unpack.

“What are you looking for?”

“It’s really not ok about Dean,” she replied.

John sighed, but didn’t argue. He rarely disagreed with his wife and she wasn't wrong.

“The doctor said--”

“The doctor doesn’t know our son, Mary.” 

“Yes, but—”

“Look, you left. I made a call. He wasn’t ready to go back.”

“John, we need to talk.”

Everybody knows what that means. John had already survived the worst. There wasn’t much more Mary could do to him. She took a breath and began to speak. Just as abruptly, she stopped again and stared beyond him.

Dean was leaning on the doorframe. Arms folded. Watching.

“Dean,” Mary said. “Could you give us a minute, sweetie?”

“Whatever you tell him, you can tell me.”

Mary blinked, incredulous. Without a word, she vowed to finish with John later and ushered Dean down the hall, inquiring about spelling.

John rushed to change the sheets. He couldn’t help his wife's suspicion. He could, however, dispense with all evidence. Once the bedclothes were in the washer, he hopped into the shower and scoured every inch of his sex-soiled skin. He plucked the towel from the hook without leaving the stall. It was only as he stepped onto the bathrug, drying his eyes that he found Melinda Bradshaw’s Tupperware on the closed toilet lid.

John sighed and wrapped the towel around his waist. Mary was waiting beside the bed, expression cold as iron, arms folded.

“Our son hasn't been in the ground for two weeks.”

“Mare”

“Don't try it, John. I smell her fucking everywhere, okay?”

John tried to touch his wife’s arm, but did not deny the conveniently wrong accusation. She slipped away and blew out of the room like a hurricane.


	13. Chapter 13

If they’d had a dog, John would be sharing its house. As it was, he was banished back to his usual haunt: the basement. Little did Mary know, it wasn’t much punishment. He had the liquor and the bigscreen and Mindy Lin. And his dick was working again, thank you very much.

A gentle knock came at the door could only be one person. John pressed pause, took a deep breath and resolved to wait it out.  
Dean knocked louder the second time. Then, he whispered through the keyhole.

“Dad?”

Holding his breath was stupid, but that didn’t stop John from doing it.

“Dad, let me in. I just want to say good night.”

Yeah, sure. He wanted to say good night, and climb into John’s lap, and work his devilish magic and make John all horny and - No. Not with Mary in the house.

“Dad!”

The boy was pounding now, or kicking the door. Low, deep thuds that would wake the neighborhood. John gripped the remote, clenched his jaw. He swallowed a thick wad of spit.

“Dad,” the boy was whining now. “Please.”

“Dean, go to bed.”

To let him in would be suicide. To make him stand there was cruel, and could easily devolve into screaming. Common sense said open the door. John's fatherly instincts encouraged him to inquire through the panel whether his boy was okay. The cells of his body ached to open the door and have at Dean's body.

Self-preservation and cowardice won the day, compelling John sit his ground. Eventually, the knocking stopped.

It wasn’t until a few hours later, when he had to piss that John staggered over and opened the door. Dean, who’d fallen asleep sitting on the floor with his back to it, fell into the room. John stood over him, hands on his hips, eyes bleary from drink.

“Go lay on the couch, you little nut.”

When he returned from the can, the boy was curled up under a blanket. Despite the swirl in his skull, John stooped to lift Dean and carry him to his room.

“Let me stay. Please.”

John clicked off his porn and plopped on the sofa at Dean's feet, staring at the blank, grey screen.

“There’s nothing I can do,” he slurred. “You know that.”

Dean snaked over and laid his cheek on his dad’s leg. That was fine. Dean curled his fingers over John's thigh and began to rub.

“You need to go to bed, son.”

“I need…”

Dean’s hand snailed under the hem of John’s shirt, pinched a nipple between two straight fingers.  
With his body boiling, John gritted his teeth - one hand gripping his pants leg, the other clutching the hair on the back of his own head to keep from touching his son.

“Your mother is in the house.”

“Upstairs,” Dean answered. “Asleep.”

John sighed loudly.

“Don’t you still want me, Dad?”

“I want you to go to bed.”

“If you come with me.”

The child was clinically insane. Or he had no idea of the jailtime a man would do for this. Or he didn’t care. Or the ghost of Sam was trying to punish John for being such a shitty father.

John closed his eyes, and for lack of a better idea, started counting in his head. Dean climbed onto his lap, straddled his thighs and slathered sloppy, wet pecks all over John’s face. He tried to lick his way into his father’s mouth, but John kept his teeth clamped.

Dean's small warm hands gripped his ears. The boy whimpered and pleaded, grinding down on his dad’s hopelessly hard cock. Still, John counted like he was being paid to number the stars, or the grains of sand, or the hairs on Dean’s head, or the seconds he’d spend in prison if Mary caught them like this.

Finally, the slurps stopped.

"Fine."

Dean sat back and stopped squirreling around. Without another word, he dismounted and left the room. John didn’t open his eyes for a full minute after the door clicked shut.

***

John was snoring with his mouth open when the banging made him snap upright and instantly wake.

“Open this goddam door.”

Mary Campbell Williams using profanity: a wonderful way to start the day. Right along with his screaming hangover. John dragged his feet, scratched his ass, and unlocked with a sigh.

“What is this?” she asked, before the door was even open.

_“This”_ turned out to be the half-empty bottle of Jack that went missing last night.

“Why is our son drinking Jack Daniels?”

“What?”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Mary shoved the bottle at John, but his foggy mind failed to complete the catch.

It shattered at his feet, the warm sweet fragrance wafting up from around his bare toes. John’s brain scrambled for explanations where there were none. Dean popped up behind his mother. The look on his face was wide-eyed guilt. The way Mary was glaring at them both, John prepared his eardrums for a hollering. Instead, she pointed at the stairwell.

“Go outside.”

“It’s my house, too,” Dean said.

“Now, Dean,” she muttered. “Go.”

Somehow, this quiet voice was scarier than if she’d been raving, screaming mad. Dean did as he was bid, leaving his father alone to incur the wrath he deserved. John mustered up the only plausible, and incidentally, true story and was going to explain that their son had nicked the bottle.

Mary spoke first, “Susie offered me a job.”

She didn’t always get along with her sister, but the woman did run a successful day care center. Susie Campbell didn’t have any kids of her own and John had been waiting 20 years for her to admit she was a lesbian. Of course, Mary’s Episcopal sensibilities would have imploded at that news. But if Susie was offering Mary a job, and Mary was telling John, that meant Mary was thinking about taking this job, which meant Mary would move to Michigan.

Which meant John and Dean would be blessedly alone. The only question was how soon she’d go. John kept his smile under wraps and thought about offering to help her pack her China.

Wait. Fifteen years of marriage, over just like that? Was John really going to just let her walk out of the door without a fight? This woman had given John her youth and the two best things that ever happened to him. She was the mother of his North Star. John took two steps toward her. Amazingly, Mary didn't shrink away from his embrace. She raised her arms, clutching his shoulders, softening with each sob.

“I just… With Sammy. I can't …”

“It’s okay.” John kissed her cheek. “Baby. I understand. I… God, you don’t know how I’ve been suffering.”

John had suffered for a while. Then, Dean had made him soar.

If only there was a way to tell her and not risk the planet’s implosion. Could she ever understand? Could John bring himself to speak it? What if Dean explained that Sam had sanctioned it…

It was all insane. John had lapsed into temporary psychosis. The thing with Dean was over. His wife was home. He'd fallen off the edge of his life. Now, it was time to climb behind the helm again.

The moment John's lips met Mary’s, he gave his affair with his son a private eulogy. He lifted his bride from her feet and carried her to their marital bed.


	14. Chapter 14

The sex was better than they’d had in years. Since Dean was born, they’d always been in a rush, often drunk. Recently, John hadn’t been able to perform at all, but he was back. Dean had somehow healed him. 

As John entered his wife, his mind kept wondering to how different it was with Dean. He was small and wiry and willing. She was curvy and soft and cautious. Both perfect.   
If John could have both…

He shook the thought from his mind and kissed Mary’s hair, just as Dean’s footsteps pounded up the hall. Without knocking, he opened what (in his mother’s absence) had become their shared bedroom.

The boy looked between them, took one loud, labored breath and then ran back down the hall. 

“Has he been acting this weird the whole time?” Mary asked.

Don’t do it. Don’t argue. Shut it down. Let it pass: wise words of advice circled around John’s skull before he asked:

“Have you thought about how hard this must be for him?”

“What kind of question is that?” she sat up. “Of course, I’ve thought about it.”

“I mean, and I’m not trying to start a fight here.” (Famous last words) “But you just left, Mary. You… what the hell were you thinking?”

“No,” she said, scooting to the edge of the bed. “You do not get to do this. You don’t get to villify me.”

“Nobody is villifying you. I’m trying to understand how you thought that leaving your son—”

“With his father, who is supposed to be an adult—”

“After he’d just lost his brother…”

“You know what, John?” Mary stepped into and pulled up her panties. “I told Sue I’d talk to you, but there’s nothing to say here, is there? This has been over for a long time. Before Sammy…”

John didn’t speak.

“And you... Were you just never going to send him back to school?”

“When he was ready.”

“He’s never going to be ready, John. This isn’t going to go away. He has to—”

“What?” John sniffed loudly. “Move on?”

“Yes. Susie has… There are a lot of rooms in that house. And here… There’s nothing good for Dean here. Just memories and heartache.”

John didn’t argue, because he didn’t disagree. 

***

He’d retreated to the garage and was in the process of changing his spark plugs when a pair of skinny arms wrapped around his waist from behind. Despite his greasy fingers, he peeled the boy off and did not turn around to bark, “Go play.”

“Don’t be like that, Dad,” Dean said. “I’m not mad. I mean, I was, but Sammy said—”

“Would you stop it.” John spun so fast Dean flinched. “Sam did not say anything. Sam is dead. Dead people don’t speak. They don’t send messages. They don’t tell you to do things.”

Dean’s lip quivered, but he soldiered on. “He said that she’s your wife. And you have to have sex with her. It’s, like, in the contract.”

“What are you talking about? Would you just…” John dropped his head, choked on his own cruelty for a moment before he spat out. “Just go… find somebody your age to play with.”

“You don’t mean that.”

Dean shrank back as John lunged and lifted the boy onto his shoulder. He carried his son into the yard, placed him on his ass in the grass and tromped back to his car. Dean was still sitting there, dumbfounded when the power door began to groan shut.

***

Mary prepared their last supper. John considered leaving before the meal, to spare himself and Dean the agony of goodbye. But he opted to put on a brave face at the head of the family table one final time. Then, God alone knew what he’d do.

It was the same inedible, unidentifiable cooking as always. John would rather eat Dean’s cum for dinner. He allowed himself a bitter grin at the depraved inside joke while avoiding eye contact with his son. 

When Dean’s socked toes tickled his ankle, John leapt from his chair and searched the spice cabinet.

Mary cast an annoyed glance over her shoulder. “Are you going to sit down?”

“You two go ahead. I’m not hungry.”

She cleared her throat. “Dean, your father and I—” 

Don’t put me in this, you bitch. This wasn’t my idea.

John chewed his tongue. Literally. The blood filled his mouth.  
Mary was right. Sam was the memories. John was the heartache. Dean should go. 

“We’ve decided—” Mary wordlessly pleaded. 

John was the man. It was up to him to spill the blood.

“You’re going to go live with your mom and your aunt Susie for a while,” he said. “She’s got all those rooms, you know?”

Dean looks between them. “You’re kidding, right?”

John didn’t reply.

“That’s bullshit.”

“Dean!” Mary spoke softly reaching for a hand he jerked away.

Dean recoiled as if his father had struck his face. “That’s what you want?” 

“It’s the best possible—”

His chair screeched across the floor as he stood and shoved John’s chest. As Dean ran from the kitchen, John covered his mouth and fought to keep himself from chasing him down.


	15. Chapter 15

John stood in the middle of the utility room, poring over the shelves of tools and knickknacks, the weapons, the maps, the emergency supplies. He rubbed his hands back and forth over his scalp as if that would scratch up some perspective. He was supposed to be choosing items to finish packing the car, not rubbing the hell out of his eyes.

The door squeaked open. Dean stared in, wearing a scowl deep enough to put lines on his young face. 

“Where’s your mother?”

“She went out.” Dean stepped in and closed the door behind him. 

“Don’t you need to pack?” 

“Are you seriously going to fuck me and throw me away, Dad?”

“Don’t you talk that way to me.” John moved so fast he startled himself, pinning his son to the door, bunching the boy’s shirt in his fist.

“I’m sorry.”

Dean’s eyes were glassy. None of the belligerent back talk. Just heartbreaking compliance. 

John let him go, wiped his mouth, and took two steps back. He was losing his mind. This boy was among the reasons. Mary’s plan was best for all of them.

“You need to get out there on that lake,” John said. “Do some fishing, some kayaking…”

“I don’t care about any fucking lake.”

“Watch your goddamn mouth,” John hissed. “I don’t even know how much longer I’m going to have this house. Then, it’s… You need to go. End of story.”

“It’s not the end of anything,” Dean said. 

He sucked his lower lip between his teeth. His deep set defiant eyes blinked, then streamed. 

“Jesus Christ, Dean.”

“I’m sorry.” The boy hung his head. “Do I not make you feel good enough?”

“You…” 

John shook his head.   
Don’t touch him. Whatever you do, don’t get roped into touching him. Your only son who is crying his eyes out because he thinks you’re discarding him because he’s not good enough. God forbid you should touch your own child. 

John started with a cautious hand on Dean’s shoulder. Ol’ Hank was convinced that hugging his son would make the boy gay.   
Ha.  
When the tears didn’t stop, John tried both hands, both shoulders. Palms on Dean’s face. A fatherly hug. A smooch on the top of his head. On his forehead. 

“You know you’re perfect, right?” John whispered. “You were always. I’m the one who… I’m sorry I’ve been such a dick to you. I do not have my shit together, Dean. If I did, I would never have… When I do, I’ll… write. I’ll visit. I swear.”

He stroked his boy’s face. Smeared away the incessant flow of tears. Kissed Dean’s cheek. His damp, salty eyes. His precious mouth. Swiped his tongue between his lips and when Dean opened to him, he entered for the last time. 

“Do you have any idea how wrong this is?” John asked, pressing their foreheads together.

“It’s not wrong at all. We both love each other. We both want it. Why is it wrong?”

Dean frantically unfastened his father’s pants.

“Son.”

Dean reached into John’s shorts. 

“Dean.”

He ignored John’s feeble protests and wrapped his lips around the weeping cockhead. John glanced at the door, thought of a million reasons and ways to make his son stop. He employed none of them. This is the last time. They both deserved a farewell. 

He curved a palm around Dean’s ear, slowly delved deeper, drawing all the way out and watching his eager son chase the cock with his wide open mouth. Goodbye to this beauty forever.

“Get it wet, son.”

Dean nodded and did his level best. Nearly taking the dick into his throat before he gagged and backed away. That was plenty, John was sopping and what he needed was the following:

Both of their pants around their knees. Dean’s face on the worktable counter, both hands gripping the edge tight. Dean’s shirt bunched around his armpits. John’s tucked under his chin. He spat into his fingers, circled the moisture around Dean’s puckered entrance. The boy groaned and eased back. John opened him as thoroughly as the space and time allowed. He entered as tenderly as his hunger and care dictated. Dean whimpered long and high. Then he begged, “Harder, Dad. Please.” 

John clamped a hand over his mouth and pressed in further before pulling back a bit. He licked Dean’s ear and thought about admitting he was the best thing John had ever did. The best thing to ever happen to him. In lieu of the words, he reached around to pleasure Dean’s twitching wood. Jerking in fast, short pulls with thumb and two fingers.

“Dad, I’m gonna—”

The door knob turned, the door opened, and the world skidded to a halt. Mary stood stock still for a little under one second. 

Enough time for John to imagine he could deny or explain. 

You going to believe me or your lying eyes?

If she could only understand how this happened. And that Dean had never once asked him to stop. In fact, the boy had… 

She grabbed Dean’s wrist and yanked him away.   
The first thing she hurled was a map. It fluttered limply to the floor. A screwdriver was a far more effective projectile. Thus began a rain of manual tools. John struggled to right his clothes while defending his head. Dean clung to his mother’s arm at first, trying to pull her away.

“Mom, stop it.” 

Then, he lifted a hatchet.

John shouted, “No, Dean! Put it down.”

The boy paused with the ax in mid-air. Mary wrestled it from his hand. With a solid shove, she knocked him into the hall, slammed and locked the door. 

While Dean banged from the other side, she screamed and hurled things at John’s face as if she was auditioning for the circus. Not aimless, feminine hysteria. Mary was gifted markswoman and athlete. Luckily for John, her anger sent many of her missiles astray. Chunks flew out of the drywall instead of his skull. John couldn’t help thinking he would have to fix the holes.

“Mary.”

Her next weapon was a tire iron. That struck John in the face. He yelped, stumbled back, nose aching, blood gushing. He briefly considered lobbing it back at her. That would put an abrupt end to this. He could storm her with it, bash a few times. Hell, you could end a person with a tire iron and a little murderous intent.

On the other side of the door, Dean shrieked for his father. Three feet away, Mary’s murderous intent kicked in. She took hold of a mopstick. It was equipped with steel trap on the bottom for the rag, or for mauling filthy pedophiles. She jabbed his ribs a few times and then, beat, bashed and banged John’s head so savagely that he learned something that day: you could end a person completely with just about anything if you put your mind to it. 

Mary Campbell married John before she finished college, but she was no quitter. John’s arms were a poor helmet, skin quickly torn to shreds. He could have stood and commandeered the mopstick. He could have made it stop.

But his wife was screaming like a banshee, “You fucking animal.”  
  
John didn’t try to stop her, because she wasn’t wrong. She had every right to kill him. He should have already done it himself. When Mary found their family set of pistols, John cowered in the corner. He didn’t protest or run or do anything but wait.

She took out her own gun, with the beautiful pearl inlay. Holding it in trembling hands, she aimed at his face. It clicked. She cocked and tried again. 

They’re not loaded or anything, Dad. 

In her frustration, Mary screamed. If her head had been clear, she might have taken the bullets from the shelf, loaded and finished her task. But she hurled the guns at him, one by one. Dean’s flew at him last, the smallish one with jade on the grips. 


	16. Chapter 16

John awoke with the blood caked in his nostrils and the corners of his eyes and mouth. The skin on his nose was cracked and rigid with scabbing. His left eye wouldn’t open at all. The right one squinted enough to see the dark.

Pain, as soul-deep as any he suffered in Nam, racks his bones and radiates out to his punctured and perforated skin. It’s that same pitch-black and sickening torture that comes with killing a man and not quite feeling remorse. 

John lay in the corner of the utility room in a pile of discarded things, when he should have been dead. Here was a man who let one son die, then irreparably damaged the other one. With his one-half good eye, John searched his memory for a tool to finish Mary’s job.

A nail gun?

She probably couldn’t reach or else she’d have employed it.   
Up. On the far wall. John would have to stand. He groaned through the act of sitting upright, swooning as the room tilted. Where had he learne about those little bones in your ears that maintain balance? Those little suckers might as well be scattered on the floor among John’s broken tools.

This is the definition of irony. A man, striving so hard to be a better father than his own, winds up the worse imaginable failure. There should be a reward for this level of fuckupery. And layers of Hell dedicated to the unemployed and sonfuckers. 

A thin flicker of light pierced the dark. At John’s feet, sat a boy.   
His boy. The other one. The dead son. All aglow. 

His heart hammered in his chest like a wild bird freshly caged. 

Sam’s face is all healthy and plump. His bright orange curls lay cropped close to his head as they’d be in life. His brown eyes sparkle behind the thick lenses of his glasses. His buck teeth and protruding ears. Everyone is supposed to think their own child is beautiful. John had always known better, but he’d never been happier - and dizzier - to see his odd-looking son.

“Sammy?” 

“Hey, Dad.”

Sam’s hand was cool on his ankle, as substantial as anything John ever felt.

“Dean needs you,” the boy said. “Could you not flake out on him, please?”


	17. Chapter 17

The house was empty, of course. Oh, the furniture and crap was still there, but his wife and child were more ghosts than Sam.

John, limping and cradling his left arm over fractured left ribs, denied himself the alcohol he craved. He settled for a pot of coffee, painstakingly changed out of his bloody clothes and nearly fainted in the shower.

How much blood had he lost. Mary never half-assed any job.

She’d care well for Dean, unlike his father, who’d used him as a pin cushion.  
Bad John. Bad, bad, dizzy, nauseous, probably concussed John.

A doctor wouldn’t be a dumb idea.

_What happened, sir?_   
_And how will you be paying?_   
_Right, well. Sounds like you deserved it, and our office doesn’t accept Chuck E. Cheese tokens._

Sam’s voice echoed in John’s ears, but behind with the high-pitched ringing. The boy’s words were garbled and unclear. Something about flakes.  
Frosted? Corn flakes?  
No, that made no sense.

Whatever. John heated a fish and cheese casserole. Ate two bites and vomited like a champ.  
What was it Sam had said? Ol’ Sammy boy. Little dead Sam.  
Something about Egypt?  
That wasn’t right, either.

John lay on the sofa for a nap, or to die. Whichever was fine. A little rest might help him recall, or finish him off. One way or the other.  
Mary Campbell Soup really scrambled his eggs.


	18. Chapter 18

When John could walk without feeling like he’d pass out, he loaded his firearms and hunting supplies into the trunk. He scoured the house, collecting every rusty cent from under the sofa pillows and in the boys’ piggy banks - a grand total of $937.45.  
Finally, John shaved, showered and packed a duffel with clothing necessities: hiking boots, a few pairs of jeans, t-shirts, flannels. Socks and shorts. The Basics. 

He dumped every drop of booze around the kitchen, dousing rags and curtains in highly flammable spirits. He left his house with fifteen candles burning on the kitchen table and a shimmering swelter wafting out of the gas oven. 

Twenty minutes outside of Wichita, two days away from Guadalupe, Mejico. Barrelling. Down Rte 35. He’d already picked a new name and decided never to. mention this chapter of his life again. 

Sam’s words burst forward in his mind, with crystal clarity.

Could you not flake out on him, please?

Of course, John’s concussed brain had hallucinated the boy. It was also the kind of condescending advice his eight-year-old genius son would give. 

How was it flaking out? John doing the right thing. He was leaving Dean alone to live a good, wealthy, safe life with his mother and his aunt. John was relinquishing his last reason to live. What more could a man do?

***

The boys were a pederast’s daydream, uniformed in pale blue tops, khaki shorts or slacks, and shiny black shoes. They filed out of the double doors, chirping and leaning on each other’s shoulders. John had never thought of himself as a predator or a creep, but in that moment, he wasn’t sure anymore. 

He’d developed a new appreciation for those red-faces, long limbs, still-high-pitched laughs. One boy darted off from the stream of them. John sighed, whether in longing of his own faded youth or for the one way he could return to it. Either way, the yearning burned low and sweet, like an aged bourbon. 

The previous afternoon, he’d tried his luck at the public school nearest Mary’s sister Susie’s house and not sighted his son. This day, however, bore glorious fruitful. Dean lagged behind his peers, nose down, watching his feet shuffle. 

He was the most beautiful of them all, sullen and solitary. A boy to distract a Greek god and wind up magicked into a flower. 

John’s goal was simple: to. look in his boy’s eyes and say a proper goodbye.  
His heart fluttered as he reached for the door handle. Just as quickly, it halted and sank. His sister-in-law stood with one foot on the ground, the other still inside her BMW. She shouted and waved for Dean to hurry.

Hurry, why? Had she spotted John? Would she call the cops? Had she already done it? Should he peel out now?

Susie never even glanced John’s way. Her urgency had some other reason, but not much effect Dean’s pace. She yelled again and Dean replied with a middle finger salute. 

That a boy. Give-em-hell. 

What if this was his last chance? They could be move him again. This time, god knew where. If Susie did see John, she had unlimited resources at her disposal. She’d hide Dean in some boarding school and John would never find him.

He could dart out and grab the boy, risk being seen, and make a run for it. Or he could keep calm and be patient. What was it Dean said? Love was all that mattered. Maybe love would make a miracle.

John hadn’t believed in a higher power since he was in third grade. But he wasn’t above asking the Universe for a little help, as his son climbed into Susie’s car and rode away.


	19. Chapter 19

Susie’s house was bigger than John recalled. Of course, he’d never viewed it with the perspective of wanting to scale its walls and enter by what he deduced and hoped was a bathroom window.  
He was plotting from a mental blueprint, based on the single occasion he’d been inside. Three years prior, Susie had deigned to invite the lowly Williamses to her house warming, probably to show her humble beginnings by having Mary present. 

Mary was the more beautiful sister, but she hadn’t made much of herself other than John’s wife and their boys’ mother. Meanwhile, Susan Campbell had finished college, gotten her masters, and started a childcare empire. 

At sundown, John, dressed in black, streaked across the lawn and thanks to the lattice and vines it was easy as it looked to climb to a second floor balcony. He slithered in through the cracked window into a room reeking of Mary’s perfume. If she’d have been present, John’s thud to the floor would have ended his ninja days.

The shower was running in the adjoining bathroom suite. 

John bearcrawled to the door, listened for footsteps and then escaped into the long, dark corridor, venturing right. Quite by luck, the next door he nudged open led into a room where Dean’s camoflage backpack and a stack of textbooks lay on the unmade bed. 

He sniffed the pillow, rewarded with Dean’s sweaty scent and shocked to uncover the wood-handled pistol (Sam’s) beneath it. 

Was the kid so scared? Had John made him that way?  
Did Mary take Dean to some therapist who’d convinced him that his father was a godless predator? Of course, she had. And that was the fair, right thing to do. John had taken advantage of his son’s grief, and his unsophistication.  
This gun was meant to protect against monsters like him.

John covered his mouth, holding back the flood that had been threatening to break since the day they pronounced his baby son dead to the world.  
Dead.  
And his older boy would forever live in fear and hate, because of John’s weakness and depravity.

It was time to disappear. To leave Dean alone, once and for all, but not without some trace. An apology. A feeble explanation that wouldn’t excuse his sins, but hopefully illuminate them.

John dug into Dean’s backpack for a pen and a page from Dean’s black and white marbled composition notebook. While he was at it, ripped out a souvenir for himself. The first page of drawings: a dragon blowing fire on superheroes.

The following pages featured dogs and cats cautiously drawn and signed by Sam. John’s heart swelled to bursting. He’d taken a single family photo from the house and let the rest burn. This was another type of irreplaceable treasure.

Ultimately, John left the drawings for Dean, who must have taught Sammy to draw while John was working, or wallowing in his hovel. He’d missed so much. Had prided himself in not beating them. Rather than violence, he gave them a vacuum. A fresh wave of tears threatened his equilibrium when he needed to be done and get out of here.

John flipped the page and filled with warm awe. All over Dean’s page were hearts. In some were the initials SW. Still others were marked JW. John was tracing over those letter with his fingertips when Dean stepped into the room. 

His eyes bulged before he snapped the door shut and huffed, “Dude.”

He took one deep breath before launching himself across the room, slinging his arms around his father’s neck. John allowed himself a low laugh and a kiss on his son’s cheek. Then he stepped back and studied the uniform, imagining the field day he’d have unpacking this present. 

He visibly shook the deranged thought from his head. 

“You all right?”

Dean nodded eagerly, shaking with excitement. “Sam said you would come.”

“We got to stop talking about Sam, Dean. I’m not sure I can take it.”

The boy winced, but pursed his lips rather than argue.

“And what’s with this?” John lifted the gun, emptied the cartridges and handed it to his son. “What the hell were you thinking?”

Dean shrugged. He dug in his backpack and pulled out another pistol from an interior side pocket. He turned that over to his father, as well. 

“Are you scared?”

Dean gazed at his shiny black shoes. 

“Were you… planning to use them?”

The silence spoke volumes. John tucked the guns into his waistband. He wouldn’t ask whether Dean’s plans were for himself, his mother and his aunt? Was he going to wreak havoc tonight? Tomorrow at school? John couldn’t entertain the possibilities without having breaking down. He needed to stay focus and finish this.

Dean scratched the back of his neck. “Can we just get out of here?”

“Your mother…”

“She took me to some kind of doctor,” Dean exhaled. “Dude tried to look at my ass.”

John ran both hands through his hair. 

“I didn’t let them touch me. Just… She’s not being cool about it.”

Not unreasonable. 

“You should really take me out of here.”

“I just wanted to…”

What? Why was John in this house, in this room, one plaster wall away from a woman who knows what he’s become? To say goodbye. To let Dean see that he hadn’t just walked away without looking back. 

“I didn’t just abandon you,” John said. “I didn’t flake out.”

No more weird hallucinations now.  
A letter would have done as well, but if he sent one, there was no guarantee Mary would give it to him. And some things are better said in person. 

Dean dumps his books from his bag and stuffs in underwear.

“Dean.”

“Almost done.”

Socks. Another gun from a shoebox in the bottom of the closet. A pair of jeans. A bottle of Jack Daniels that John confiscated and sat on the bedside table. A snowglobe.

“What is that?”

“It’s Sam’s.”

No further explanation required. Besides…

“Dean, you can’t come with me,” John finally said. “I’m not going anywhere. I have no…”

Future. Mary and Susie could give Dean the kind of life that John had never been able to afford, not even when he was working to his bones. Prep school, college, all of it paid for. 

“Well, I’m not staying here.” 

“Can you just…” John’s voice broke. “Could you just do what somebody tells you for a change?”

“No. I love you. I want to be with you. That’s all that matters.” Dean curled his arms into both straps of his backpack. “I’m ready to go. If you leave me here, I’ll do something awful.”

John took ten seconds to empty his lungs. He caved with a full awareness that upon the first growl of his belly, Dean would be begging for his mama. Then John would send the boy home on a bus.

He opened the window and began to crawl through first. One leg hanging from the ledge, not entirely sure he wouldn’t run off in the darkness and leave the boy after all.

“What about mom?”

“Son.” John shook his head. “Your mother has made her —”

“If we don’t do something about her, she’s going to come after us.”

That point hadn’t occurred to John. He’d dropped the train of thought the moment he considered the alternatives. “You mean …”

Dean shrugged.   
John blinked and glanced over his shoulder. The boy wasn’t wrong.

“You go,” he said. “Wait for me by the pear tree.”

Once Dean was safely on the ground, John stood in the middle of the floor, staring at the gun Dean had slapped into his palm. 

How well did John really know his son? He’d never raised a kid alone - or at all for that matter. The child-rearing was Mary’s domain. Now, he was supposed to go snuff the mother of his children?

This was no ordinary bed he was making. John counted to two hundred then, climbed out the way Dean went.


	20. Chapter 20

Dean’s patience ran out in Reno. They’d finished their burritos and John was reclining, fully dressed on his bed when the boy stationed himself in front of the screen.

“So, you’re just not ever going to touch me again?”

They’d been driving in a disorganized zigzag pattern, eating crappy food, sleeping in the car to preserve cash. The only reason they had a room now was that John had miscalculated how cold the desert nights would be.

“Son, I’m trying to watch that.”

“It’s a question. Just answer it.”

John let his deeds speak for him. He hadn’t so much as patted Dean’s shoulder since they left Michigan. When the sirens did come for him, those doctors wouldn’t find any fresh evidence of what John had done. He wasn’t that guy anymore. Never again. That was a moment of weakness. This was the start of a new day.

“Can you move, please, son?”

Dean stood his ground, arms folded, lower lip between his teeth. Beautiful in his indignation.

“You should have just left me, then.”

“I can take you back.”

It was a bluff. John would never return east. He’d been internally debating between Canada and Mexico. The boy crawled onto the bed and the man rolled onto his feet and crossed the room.

“Dad. Why are you being like this?”

“I’m not being like anything.”

John slipped into the bathroom, locked it and stared at himself in the mirror. How many of these lines and grey hairs could be attributed to the last couple of weeks?  
The lines outnumbered his crimes: kidnapping, incest, statutory rape, sodomy.

He was probably missing a few, and wasn’t even properly sorry for any of them. That was the problem. He wasn’t repentant. He just didn’t want to go to prison. Cold water splashed on his face didn’t help much. 

He could always leave. Get in the car and drive away. Dean was old enough to figure out how to make a collect long-distance call. If Susie paid for the flight, Mary could be there in a day.

It was the only way John was going to do the right thing. He could slip away now, without saying a thing. Someday, Dean would understand.

When John returned to the room, Dean was sitting at the end of the bed, facing the TV.

“You don’t have to do that,” he whispered before John reached his keys.

“I’m just going—”

“Sam says you and mom don’t have a legally binding custody agreement.”

“What?”

“So, it’s not kidnapping.”

“Sam says?”

“Yeah,” Dean answered without taking his eyes off the screen.

When John saw what he was watching, he sat down beside his son. Spielberg’s Elliott was walking toward his little alien buddy. ET’s heart was glowing red. It was time for him to go home. The odds of this movie playing on any of the free local channels were beyond John’s calculating abilities. 

Tears streamed down Dean’s face. John wrapped an arm over his son’s shoulder and held him close all the way through the final credits. Even then, they sat silent through the commercials. 

“I don’t want you to leave,” Dean said, wiping his face in John’s shirt. “I want to be your boyfriend. Forever and ever.”

John chuckled at the impossible request. Then, he slipped off his wedding ring and slid it onto Dean’s thumb. 

“Happy?”

“I know you don’t want to hear anything else from Sammy,” Dean said. “But do you know what the word consummate means?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> END of PART 1
> 
> Let me know if you're enjoying. Comments give life.


	21. Part 2 - Fair Share of Abuse

John held Dean’s face between his hands, licking into his mouth, swallowing the boy’s groans. At a choking sound from below, he leaned back and watched the girl pull off for a breath. She wiped her chin with her arm and gazed up at them, bleary-eyed.

Life with a 17-year-old boyfriend was never predictable.

John stroked himself while the young lady composed herself. Dean shoved her onto all fours, gripped her hips and drove in like there was a motor attached to his ass. John, who’d often been on the receiving end of this rabbit-like enthusiasm, shook his head and laughed with impressed awe.

The girl peered over her shoulder, possibly in search of the beautiful smile that had drawn her in like a fly to honey. Dean mushed her face in the carpet. He was sneering now, feral and dangerous.

No way out now but through, girly, John thought with some pity.

It only took him a few more strokes to spray all over the girl’s back. He never lasted as long as Dean anymore. A lot had changed in their last five years together.

“So hot, John. Fuck.”

Dean spooned up the mess with his fingers and sucked it off. He offered a helping to John who only ever complied because of how it turned on his boy.

Dean hooked his fingers in John’s cheek, growled and smacked him harder than John would have liked. Then, he returned his attention to the girl beneath him, hammering until she begged for a break.

“Almost there.”

“Please.”

Dean mushed his hand over her mouth and ground on.

“Dean,” John said, stepping into his underwear.

“Almost.”

They’d been down this road before. John shook his head and took a deep breath as the girl began to wail and tried to crawl away.

“That’s enough.”

When he tackled his son, the girl scrambled to her feet, grabbed her dress and purse and scurried toward the door.

“Get dressed and go,” John said, pinning a growling, struggling Dean with his entire body's weight.

Once she was gone, he rolled aside and Dean punished him with an elbow to the nose. There was blood on the boy’s dick and between his teeth. John sat up holding his busted face.

“Knock it off.”

Dean kicked him in the chest. “You’re the one who keeps wanting to . fuck girls.”

“To soften you up, Dean. Jesus.” John caught the next kick, twisted slightly and brought Dean to his knees. “You’re so fucking intense all the time, son.”

“Fuck you, man.”

Dean yanked away. John braced for another attack, but the boy tromped across the room to the mini-fridge.

“You need to drop this,” John said, still sitting on the floor, nursing his pained ribs and nose. “It’s making you crazy.”

“I was born crazy, old man. You ought to know that.”

John ought to. He was the first person to touch his son after the doctor pulled him free from his mother’s split open belly into the questionable glory of this world. For example: who would have guessed that the father who’d sired that child would become his lover? Certainly not father and lover himself.

As to Dean’s claim that he’d always been crazy, John lacked perspective.  
He couldn’t remember what Dean had been like before their affair began. Before John’s younger son and Dean’s first lover died.

Was this manic beast ever a child? If John hadn’t witnessed the snaggle tooth, fair-haired youth, he might have believed this hellion hatched fully-grown and fiery from the heart of some Icelandic volcanic. Sprouted from the ash like a god or myth in Dean’s folklore books.

“You’re never going to drop this, are you?”

“No, I’m not going to fucking drop it, Dad,” Dean said cracking a bottle of beer.

He only ever addressed John as Dad when he was pissed or in drunken affection.

“There’s a way,” Dean said. “I just got to find it.”

“You need to relax,” John said on his way to the bathroom to scrub away their latest sins.

Dean gave him the middle finger and guzzled the rest of his brew before hurling the bottle into the sink and spitting blood and beer into the shattered glass.

It’s all John’s fault, of course. Apart from his initial misdeeds, this madness started with the fact that he had no mission, no job, no prospects. He and Dean were homeless, and practically penniless.

Twelve-year-old Dean had rolled over in their tent, appearing air-brushed and heart-achingly beautiful in the mist of their overnight perspiration. He’d wiped the sweat from his dad’s forehead and said, “We ought to see if we can bring Sam back.”

What started out as an odd joke swiftly developed into an obsession:

John never believed Dean was kidding but it was such a ridiculous idea, and he was so committed to it that John actually helped him scour - first regular libraries, then obscure occult collections. That was how they fell into the band of brothers (and sisters, and a few ragged old men) who call themselves Hunters.

Dean struck up the correspondences while John worked odd jobs and day labored to stay under the radar.

One fateful night, the boy sat in the front seat, prepared to introduce his dad, as if to his homeroom teacher at school. (John had never convinced his son to return and complete his formal education).

“Oh,” Dean said while they waited. “and I told them we were Winchesters. John and Dean Winchester.”

“What?”

“Winchesters. Like the rifle.”

“Why?”

“Because it sounds cooler than Williams. Every third guy is a Williams.”

John had been considering a name change. Dean had made the decision.

It was a short leap from an introduction, to interviews with experts on paranormal phenomena, to joining hunts for so-called monsters. John worked construction jobs by day. By night, he went along with all this insanity in the name of keeping his son sane. Although he knew its futility, he supported Dean’s perpetual dedication to keeping his brother’s memory alive.

It was all fun and games and LARP as long as John could convince himself it was all elaborate hoaxes and fake haunted houses.

It wasn’t until the day Dean pulled his loaded pistol and shot a flesh and blood human man that things became very real.

John watched, slack-jawed and cold with terror, as the other ‘hunters’ decapitated, salted and burned the corpse. They all jostled his boy, patted his shoulders and exclaimed him a hero. John had never been one of those guys to let his time overseas creep into his real life. He’d dumped the horrors he’d witnessed and committed in Nam into an airtight box, wrapped it in chains and tossed the whole mess into the depths of his memory.

The hunter bullshit came as close to dredging it up and unhinging him as anything else John had ever done.

After that day, Dean had Hunter mentors, and research lessons, and it was all John could do to keep up with the training - in some aspects beyond what he received as a Marine.

There was a whole army of unsavory men for Dean to look up to. But at the end of each harrowing day, the boy crawled into his father’s bed and groaned. Bruised and tired. With his eyes shut, he’d curl on his side and John would resolve to let him rest.

“Will you fuck me, Dad?” the boy would ask, already breathless.

Dear ol' dad would always oblige.

Dean tried demon deals (surprisingly, Hell’s limited code of ethics included not making deals with human minors). He prayed, made concessions and sacrifices for dieties in every living and dead religion he learned about.

Dean constructed a clay golem, but thankfully, thought better of trying to animate it with Sam’s soul. All the while, he maintained daily conversation with his deceased brother, begging Sam not to pass on. To let Dean keep trying to bring him back.

When the boy was 16 years old, a tip brought them to Palo Alto, CA. Both he and John were injured enough in the process of trying (and failing) to extract a relic from a billionaire’s collection that the boy reluctantly conceded to a few day’s rest and recovery.

For the first time in five years, they spent a week _not_ trying to bring Sam back from the dead. John sprung for a two-star motel. They walked the Stanford campus, John fantasizing about a world in which he’d sent his son someplace like this for college. They ate a huge dinner and snagged ice cream cones to eat on a park bench while the sun set.

Dean, however, was more interested in watching two men wrestle in the grass, and laugh, and kiss. He turned to his father, pulled him close by the shirt and mashed their lips together. Hot fear burst in John’s chest as Dean’s blackberry-sweet tongue invaded his mouth in public, where anyone could see them. The boy was no longer small, but clearly too young. Despite their vastly differing looks, John also imagined that some invisible mark must reveal their biological connection.

“If you want to keep hiding,” Dean said. “We should knock this off. I don’t want to be your secret anymore.”

John shook his head. Dean crunched his cone.

“It’ll be awesome. I’ll call you John.”

“And I’ll call you crazy.”

“You can call me Betty,” Dean sang, grinning like he’d invented ice cream. “And Betty when you call me, you can call me Al.

“You were six years old when that song came out.”

Sixteen year old Dean thought it would be a good idea to hand over his desert and go to his knees in front of the bench.

“Dean. You can’t… get up, son. Get up.”

John might as well have been arguing with the wind. Strangely, his will to fight what was happening did not prevent John from becoming erect. He stared off into the distance, both hands sticky with melting ice cream as Dean performed his task vigorously in the near dark. A pair of men passed, smirking. And that was it. No one called the cops. The world did not end.

Dean smiled up, heaven-bright, hopped back onto the bench and gave his father a blackberry and cum-flavored kiss.

“Jesus,” John panted.

Dean chuckled and took back what was left of his treat. “You’re welcome.”

Soon, Dean’s kisses became beer-tinged or sopping with whiskey or blood. Toothy. Rough. Gone was the hairless little boy. Replaced by a hard-muscled 6 foot manchild, legs and balls covered in soft, fair fur. Leaning against a motel wall in Memphis, buck-naked and scouring his father with a distinct predator’s gaze. Unfinished business.

“Come here, Johnny.”

As John walked from the bathroom to his bed, he gave his cocky son the finger.

“Come on,” Dean grin. “I promise, I won’t hurt you too bad.”

“Listen, you little pissant. If you want something from me, bring your ass over here.”

The scent of woman still clung to the air and to Dean’s body as he crawled along John’s back and curled a hand around his neck. John resisted but eventually the boy won over. He let himself be humped, his chest stroked, nipples mercilessly pinched.

John yelped. “You fucker.”

He grabbed Dean’s wrist, rolled and spun, so the boy was on top. Dean’s teeth snapped with playful violence. John rolled further and mashed the kid’s face against the cold cinder block wall, pinning a wrist at the base of his spine.

“That’s what you want?”

“You know what I want, Daddy.”

“Don’t fucking call me that.” John hung his chin over Dean’s shoulder.

They’d had this conversation a thousand times. It was one or the other. John was lover or father. Not both. He closed his hands around Dean’s slender waist and jerked him back so that his ass jutted against John’s growing erection. He kicked the boy’s leg wide, face to the wall.

“I taught you better than you treated that girl.”

“Stop talking and put it in me.” Dean pulled his cheeks apart.

“We don’t have any more lube.”

“Ain't you supposed to be punishing me.”

John slapped his ass soundly, then lowered himself onto the bed, flipping Dean onto his belly and holding him open to swirl his tongue around his sweat-salty asshole. He’d memorized the taste, the scent, the feel of this boy. John licked and fingered him opened until Dean’s filthy mouth wouldn’t shut up.

“John, man, come on. Quit teasing and fuck me, you piece of shit.”

John cuffed his boy’s ear, aligned his dick holding the base as he snapped his hips forward. To give it how Dean liked it.  
The kid gasped. His spine stiffened. Then he laughed, deep and throaty, jutting his ass for more.

“Yeah, Johnny,” he murmured. “Pound that ass.”

John dragged him from the bed, pushed him against the wall. Dean cackled as his father gripped the back of his neck and gave him what he liked best: a good hard dicking. Once Dean’s knees were properly jellied, John wrapped an arm around his chest and his palm around Dean’s throat, pressing into him slow and deep.

Dean gripped the wrist on his neck but made no attempt to escape. He dropped his head back on his father’s shoulder, exposed and surrendered. It did John’s heart good to see him unwind for a change. The boy wasn’t sleeping. Hardly ate. Every failed attempt at a cure for Sam's death made Dean's every symptom worse.

“Listen, Dean, I was thinking,” John said sliding all the way in, balls deep. “Let’s sit the next one out. You been running like crazy.”

Dean’s lax body suddenly went rigid.

“Just this one.”

With a sharp jut back of his hips, Dean dislodged John’s dick, threw off his center of balance and shoved him onto his back.

“Dean.”

“You sit it out, if that’s what you want.”

The boy stormed into the bathroom. In a matter of seconds, the water was running. Discussion over.

So many times over the years, John tried to shut down the madness. Somehow, he always backed down, caved in, came along. Only to watch Dean’s back. His boy was a talented warrior who took unnecessary risks.

Once, he’d stood over his son where Dean lay on a vet’s gurney, recovering from inch-deep claw gashes in his chest. John crouched low enough to whisper, “How does this help? How do these raids and all this nonsense bring Sam back?”

Dean’s breath was loud and labored as he winced through speaking, “Sam would be ashamed if I let these monsters torment people.”

Closer to the truth: The hunting kept Dean halfway sane while he tirelessly searched for resurrection leads.

John was helpless to even slow him down. He spent every day certain that Dean would die trying to bring Sam back to life.

The only time the boy agreed was when John suggested they break from the posse of hunters who had trained them. The people who knew them as father and son and would not understand the full scope of their relationship. Reluctantly, Dean had agreed, although he maintained correspondence with many of them.

So, they became the fearsome Winchester duo because, if John hadn’t hunted, Dean would have gone alone. Not that John didn’t also get high on the adrenaline rush. The difference was that he wasn’t addicted to it. Didn’t crave or desire a life and death challenge every single day. He’d much rather have watched Dean go to college, and toss around a pigskin, or swing a bat than a machete. His grinning face blood-splattered as heads roll wasn’t the future many fathers envision for their heirs.

The things they hunted were called monsters, but were often people who’d been infected with some disease: vampirism, lycanthropy. These illnesses seemed to alter their DNA and create a violent attraction to weaker smaller members of society. The whole extermination seemed more a task for the CDC than a bunch of vigilantes.

Perhaps John held sympathy for the creatures they hunted because there were many people who’d have called him a monster, too, for what he’d done to Dean.

Often, when they were in a barn, arguing over the merits of the job, John would let his sentiments slip. “Can’t we just call the authorities?

“You kidding me?” Dean would frown and snatch the machete. “Again with the authorities? They have no idea how to handle this.”

The judicial system existed for a reason. The Winchesters had already freed the victims. They’d roped the culprits.

“Why don’t we let them—”

Dean’s blade cut through the air with an almost inaudible swish. Then, the soft thud of a cranium landing on the earthen barn floor.

John leapt back as the thing rolled near to his boot. “Jesus.”

Dean pointed to the next prisoner. “You doing that one?”

“Do you enjoy this?”

“It has to be done, John.”

“That’s not the question.”

Another swing of the machete. Another headless body

***

With the mission accomplished, they made a quick pit stop for beer. John, less blood-smeared and legally old enough to purchase alcohol (rather than flirt his way into a six-pack, which was Dean’s usual method) ran into the store while Dean refilled their truck’s gas tank.

“Bring me a pack of Strikes.”

While John was aware that Dean smoked, he did not ever purchase cigarettes for his son. It was bad enough how much Dean drank. He’d inherited that habit from John who’d got it honest from Ol’ Hank.

John could worry about that and quit again another day. Tonight, there would be drink and plenty of it. Alcohol and a good lay always quieted the screaming demons, so he could go on pretending he was a regular guy.

Dean stood by the truck, bitching for his smokes. As John hoisted the cases of beer into the flat bed, a man’s voice rang out:

“John Henry Williams?” The stranger approached. “You must be Dean?”

“Buddy, you got the wrong guys,” Dean said. “We’re Winchesters.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that, but now I’m getting a good look, I don’t think so.”

The man held out a photograph of John, Dean, Sam and Mary before their camping trip to Montana. Ten years prior. They were all smiling like nothing could ever go wrong.

The man addressed Dean. “Your mother never stopped looking.”

While John stood there in a daze, staring at that frozen memory, Dean tried to snatch the photo. When the man wouldn’t release it, Dean drew a blade and stabbed the stranger in the heart.

The man lurched, gazed at the hilt protruding from his jacket and fell forward into Dean’s arms.

“Jesus Christ.” John covered his mouth. “Jesus Christ, Dean.”

“Would you shut up and help me?”

A quick perimeter search and they hoisted the body into the truckbed with the beers. Dean climbed up, retrieved his knife and wiped it clean on the stranger’s jacket.

On his suggestion, they deposited the body behind a row of restaurant dumpsters. They drove through an automated carwash (with the beers in the cab, one already popped and in Dean’s otherwise empty belly).

And home again. Boy’s night out.

“I know you wanted to reason with the guy,” Dean said, kicking off his boots.

“I think… you know what. Forget it.”

John placed both cases on the table and helped himself to what would be the first of many. Enough to pass out. For days.

“Listen, John.” Dean unlatched his belt using only his left hand. “That kid in the picture. Dean Williams? He’s still a minor.”

Odd to hear Dean refer to himself in the past tense and third person. John didn’t question it. He guzzled his beer. It would all be in the past in a few bottles.

“She thinks he’s still me. He’s not,” Dean reasoned. “But if she finds us, you go away. Maybe forever. You know I’m right.”

John knew only his grave failure. He’d given up being a parent to become Dean’s lover. He’d left Dean to raise himself and the result was far from the compassionate caring man Mary would have brought up. Basically, John had traded Dean’s soul for sex. No amount of beer would wash that sin away.

Dean sat on the side of the bed, clutching the left side of his ribcage. He was in pain he wouldn’t name unless it damn near killed him. “You want to call your precious cops on me? Go ahead. I’ll end them, too.”

If John called the cops on anyone, it would be himself. From time to time, he thought about turning himself in. The only reason he didn’t was to keep Dean alive and to stop him from wreaking too much havoc.

“Are you okay?” John knelt at his boy’s side.

As always, Dean leaned away from solace. “I’m fine.”

“Let me have a look.”

His blood-soaked shirt didn’t look all that fine. John tried to raise it over Dean’s head, but the boy refused to raise his arm. So, John ripped it from his son’s body revealing a massive gash in his flank.

“Jesus Christ.”

“Would you stop saying that?”

John retrieved a bottle of Jack for Dean who never let out more than a sharp breath as he cleaned and sutured. Once finished, John cleared away the bloodied supplies and offered to cook. Dean shook his head and eased onto his right side.

After another hour of silent drinking, John quietly undressed and crawled into bed.

“Will you fill me up, Dad. Please?”

If John was Dad, it must have been bad. The nightmare, the need. He placed a gentle hand on Dean’s clammy back.

“Son, you need to rest.”

“Just like this. I won’t move. I just... I need it.”

In their last five years together, John had never denied his boy anything in his power to give. He retrieved the lube from the bedside table drawer, opened his son with a couple fingers before sliding in. Just the tip, not for his own pleasure. For Dean.

Cautiously avoiding the bandaged wound, John hooked a hand over Dean’s shoulder and pressed slightly deeper. The boy hung his head and groaned.

“Is it good?”

What sounded like soft gasps were sobs. John started to pull out, but Dean caught him with a hand on his ass.

“Don’t.”

“Does it hurt?”

“He stayed for me,” Dean answered a question no one had asked. “He shouldn’t have done that.”

John stopped moving, but remained inside his son’s hot, tight body. He, too, craved the comfort of connection, not for the purpose of getting off. To be grounded, anchored, humanized.

“Dean, you need to give yourself a break.”

“He’s growing fainter. Sometimes, I don’t hear anything for days,” Dean croaked. “If I die. And you die, there’s no one else to remember him.”

“Your mother.”

Dean ignored it. He always disregarded any talk of Mary.

“When we’re gone, Sam becomes nothing. He becomes mist. Because of me. You understand that? I have to save him. I promised, Dad.”

“I understand, son.”

Of course, John didn’t understand. His son had become a single-minded lunatic. It was the best he could do to hold on to Dean’s coat strings. Keep up and keep him safe.

He understood that according to Dean’s mythology, Sam had chosen not to go into the Light so that he could be with Dean. That meant his immortal soul was neither tethered to a body nor in its eternal resting place. Eventually, it would disintegrate. This was the gospel according to Dean (who John hoped would soon fall asleep).

“Why don’t you just do it and get it done?”

It took John a moment to process the words. Only when Dean began to move did he understand.

“Be still.”

“I want you to come.”

“Shut up.” John caught hold of his wickedly winding hips. “I swear I’ll get up.”

Dean pushed back, impaling himself on his father’s cock. John had latched onto the end of a comet, barreling its way toward the earth. No doubt, they would both perish. There was a fiery, horrendous end ahead of them. It wasn’t whether, but when.  
Not in that bed. Not on that night. But sometime soon, this fierce, fast living had to end.

John lay still, refusing to pursue climax on his injured son. It was a scrap of decency to cling to.

“I told you to kill her,” Dean muttered. “When we left, I told you. She’ll never leave us alone.”

“Go to sleep, Dean.”

In times like these, John considered holding a pillow over his son’s head, ending the misery. What he did instead was kiss his shoulder and whisper, “I love you. Maniac.”

***

The following day, Dean was up before dawn stuffing items into a backpack with his good hand while he cradled his ribs with the other.

John propped on his elbow.

“You don’t have to come,” Dean said without slowing. “I’ll be back in a couple days, I guess.”

“Back from?” John asked, voice still sleep-wrecked.

“Not a hunt. It’s a lead.”

“You don’t want to at least let that heal first?”

“Did you hear what I said?” Dean struggled to zip with one hand. “It’s a lead on bringing back Sam. I told you these hunters would pull through. They know all kinds of people.”

“Dean.”

“You can come if you want, but I’m going to piss and I’m out of here.”

John sat up and wiped the crust from his eyes. Dean limped to the bathroom. The wound was worse than he let on. 

When his son returned, John slid to the edge of the bed and trapped him between his thighs. He ran his arms down Dean’s firm biceps. He’d forgotten how to touch him like a son.

_Once there was a way to get back homeward…_

He stuck with what he knew. What felt right. He kissed Dean’s chest, tried to pull him closer.

“Why don’t you let me change the dressing on that?”

“It’s fine. I got to go.”

“Son…”

“Don’t, okay?”

“What would happen if… Will you sit down here a minute?”

“I really don’t have time, John.”

“Son, you got to quit chasing Sam’s ghost.”

“You know full well that Sam is not a ghost,” Dean said. “Ghosts don’t choose to stay behind. They get stuck because of unfinished business. They get trapped in a loop of their deaths. Sam _chose_ to stay with me. And he will dwindle to nothing if anything happens to me. I don’t know why I have to explain this to you over and over.”

Dean stepped back and winced as he hoisted the backpack onto his good shoulder.

At best, there was bruising. Possibly broken ribs beneath the lacerated skin. The best thing for him would be to put his feet up, watch cartoons, eat ice cream for a few days. John had bought him a gameboy for his 13th birthday that he’d only played with twice.

“Dean, we can’t keep living like this.” John hadn’t meant to put it so bluntly, but now it was out, he completed the thought. “You could have been killed.”

“Then I’d be with Sam.”

“That’s all that matters to you?”

The boy didn’t reply. Didn’t have to. John always knew he was a surrogate. Their relationship was a cheap, second-hand knockoff of the bond between his boys.

“Don’t give me that face,” Dean said, holding up a warning finger. “You don’t believe in Sammy. You don’t believe in me. You don’t believe I can do this.”

There was no denying the accusation.

“All this time, I’ve been dragging you around like a deadweight. I’m doing this with or without you.”

“You know, it’s not fun and games out there anymore, Dean.” John stood, still a few inches taller and broader than his son. “The cops catch you at one of your … hunts, you go to big boy prison.”

“You think I give a shit about that, with Sam hanging around in limbo? You think I give a shit what they do to me?”

“Dean, your brother is dead. In the real world, people die and they stay dead. If you can’t accept that, I... don’t know what to do anymore.”

“Fuck you, John. Okay? I can tell you exactly what to do. Stay the fuck out of my way or I’ll cut you down like any of the rest of them.”

Pain like a knife twisted in John’s gut as he watched Dean go. Followed by dark relief. The boy was nearly an adult. John had never been able to control him. Now, he was no longer responsible for the killing, and the violence, and the unbridled crazy. The boy had to make his own way, or break the world trying.


	22. Chapter 22

No day passed without John thinking of his sons, both of them. Every day, he considered foregoing the whole semi-normal life and doing whatever it took to find Dean. 

To be honest, he’d given up on Sam the moment they shoveled the first load of dirt onto his coffin, but that didn’t mean John stopped thinking about him. Hoping he was okay, wherever he was. Wishing he’d been a better father. Being grateful that he’d never gotten screwed Sam up the way he’d wrecked Dean. 

In the end, though, John let Dean go. The boy had broken loose. 

John reported to his mall security detail, put in his 14 hours, drove home and drank away what remained of each day.

On the rare occasion his landlady, Miss Baker, invited him up for dinner, he’d ascend the stairs to his her place, tipsy enough to eat her mediocre cooking and then her postmenopausal pussy. Call it prostitution, but in the six years he’d lived there, the rent for John’s cramped and moldy studio never rose one cent. No pets, no kids, no problem. 

In fact, his life never changed. As crappy as the work, the place, and everything was, he didn’t relocate after Dean left. He hunkered down in his own shit, in case the boy changed his mind. It wasn’t much of a home to return to, but John would be there. Praying his son wasn’t in prison or in a ditch, pushing up daffodils.

John’s was an uneventful, uncomplicated, hunt-free existence.

Then, Rufus Turner appeared at his door with a bottle of Jim Beam and a sly grin. Not John’s brew, nevertheless, he opened to the man.

In exchange for the hospitality, Rufus brought hunter’s tales from the road. He talked of new critters they’d discovered, some of them real tough to beat. He listed comrades who’d fallen or been too maimed to return to the field. Of course, there were the inevitable few who’d been turned into the vermin they’d been trying to put down. (Rufus’ words).

John listened, drank, and declined to comment. He remained silently grateful that Dean’s name was on neither list. 

Like a mind-reader, Rufus added, “Hell of a fighter your boy was.” 

At the use of the past tense, John’s body internally combusted and began to shut down.

“The two of you were a thing to behold.”

No doubt, with Dean fighting for Sam’s life and John fighting for Dean’s, it must have been poetry. John held his breath, forbade himself to ask how and when his son died. 

“And now, well…”

John’s brain shut down and rebooted. So, Dean was alive? One thing was sure, Rufus had information.

“Now, tell me this isn’t a re-recruitment visit,” John said. “Because I’m done with all that.”

“Like I said, I was in town. Heard tell you were still here. Thought I’d drop by.”

“Heard tell where?”

“Oh, you know, we keep tabs on our own,” Rufus said. “We consider you and your boy to be part of the family at large, regardless of all your… private doings.”

John replied with silence.

It was no wonder folks knew the full story on the Winchesters. In their day, a tendency had developed of referring to Dean as John’s boy, rather than his son. It was a subtle change, but a level of respect that he hadn’t expected. 

“So, what do you think about where Dean’s at these days?” Rufus asked.

It’s not a question. It’s a juicy worm at the end of a jagged hook. 

Don’t bite. Don’t bite. Be quiet. Have another swig. And another. That’s it.  
Meanwhile, John’s tongue hung ever looser.

“Not at all worried about what he’s doing to the family name?” Rufus asked.

If Dean wasn’t dead, and he wasn’t a vamp or a wolf, John didn’t need to know. 

He finally confessed, “I haven’t talked to that boy in six years.”

Wherever he was, Dean was a man.

Rufus drank in commiseration and said, “Yeah, well, kids can be ungrateful shits.” 

Rather than point out that his son was protecting himself from years of abuse, John had another slog.

“Still,” Rufus shook his head in unmistakable shame. “A witch, though?”

“What witch?”

“Goes by the name Aglaea. Out in Fayatteville. At least that’s the word. Dean Winchester shacked up with a witch, doing her worst bidding.”

“Must be another Dean Winchester.”

Rufus scratched his chin. “I rather doubt that.”

For the first time, John wanted the man out of his house. “Dean has burned witches.”

John had seen it and hadn’t much cared for it. Those were among the most vomit-inducing executions he’d witnessed. Furthermore, Dean had never shown the slightest interest in females, no matter how much they sniffed around him. He’d only ever been with women at John’s request.

Rufus shrugged. “Just telling you what I heard.”

“No way.”

“That’s what I would have said, too. You know the only reason nobody’s taken them both down yet is your boy’s reputation,” Rufus said with eye contact solid as steel. “Out of respect, and because she doesn’t seem to do any harm. But folks are always watching, aren’t they?”

That’s what this was: a warning visit. Well, Dean wasn’t John’s problem anymore. He was a grown man, 23 years old. Making his own decisions. John Winchester said as much, nice and loud, in case Rufus was wired, and anybody else was listening in on the score. 

By the time he saw the man to the door, John’s brain was a liquor-addled mess. He marched back to the sofa, brooded for ten minutes before he stood and stomped toward the door again. He made it halfway there before his swimming head told him to have a seat. 

Right there. In the middle of the floor.

***

The apartment complex was new - built in the last decade. Glass front. Fountain out front. Swank. Nowhere John would expect to find his ruffian son. 

There wasn’t a lot of foot traffic, so it was easy to keep tabs on the drab, uninteresting women (and one man) who arrived in luxury cars. In under an hour, red-carpet-worthy stunners drove away in the same vehicles. If there wasn’t magic going on up there, this Aglaea chick was talented with the mascara.

The first afternoon, John only watched the exterior and saw no trace of Dean. No sign of nefarious dealings. He’d have to go in. 

Of course, he didn’t have to, but if he wanted more information than that supplied by the outgoing message of the witch’s voicemail, the decision was made. The question was how to approach an infiltration. On the one hand, John could pose as an inspector, but that would instantly put the woman on the defensive. It was better to act like a potential client. 

That would be a hard sell. As a former marine/security guard, he was more likely to shop at Navy surplus than to get a makeover. He worked out his angle, his story, his character before entering the building.

The concierge raised her plucked eyebrows but directed John to the second floor for Aggie Elias. He rode the elevator to the marble floored second level, humming along to the Muzak version of More Than a Feeling.

Finding Dean turned out to be ridiculously easy. John knocked, rang and ten seconds later, his son opened the door onto a bone-white and dazzlingly spare apartment. On first glance, the only splash of color were the leaves of a giant, tropical plant by the floor to ceiling window.

Nothing else registered. John knew Dean’s face like the contours of his own dreams. The boy had been an attractive youth, but his good looks appeared supernaturally intensified. Now, he emanated a subtle golden sheen. His freckles were gilded. His emerald eyes glowed. Skin like honeyed-cream with flecks of toffee. He wore a white Nehru tunic, loose-fitting white linen pants, leather mocassins.

And lip gloss?

His eyes didn’t register even a flicker of recognition, but his firm handshake lingered. Or maybe that was John’s wishful thinking. He swelled with illogical pride at having sired, kissed, licked, and entered this heavenly body. He wondered whether Dean had shared that information with this Aggie and what Dean was to the witch, apart from official Greeter. 

No explanation was necessary for Dean’s impersonal reception. If pretending they were no relation helped Dean heal, John could accept that. In fact, now that he’d seen the boy alive and thriving, he could leave.

John’s mind snapped to attention with his son’s low, calm, “Welcome, sir.”

He nodded and accepted the cold cordiality as just desserts. He deserved death for what he’d done to Dean. This was worse.

“Do you have an appointment?”

“Uh, no. I didn’t know I need one.”

“Well, have a seat. We’ll try to make space for you.”

John sat on a white bean bag, shifted about for comfort, grimacing in confusion at the loud screeches and thunderous noises coming from an adjoining room. Whatever was making that racket was completely out of sync with the sitar music, the tabletop water fall, the coconut water that Dean offered John in an actual coconut shell, with a glass straw. 

“You have an amazing jawline,” Dean said, taking his father’s face between his hands, as if to study his bone structure. “What are you having done?”

John would have whatever Dean had. Talk about improving on perfection. 

He was conjuring his prepared answer when a godawful howl in the next room carried through the walls, followed by the appearance of a glorious, chestnut-haired child. The boy entered the waiting area and halted at John’s feet, wide kaleidoscope eyes staring as if someone had pressed pause on the remote control that made him function.

Behind him stood an almond-eyed, olive-toned, magnificent woman with thick black curls. She, too, wore all white - an ankle-length, strapless dress that belonged on the beaches of some Mediterranean island. 

John stood and bowed slightly, as if to shake her hand would be too coarse. “Ma’am.”

“Call me Aggie.” 

She placed long-fingered hands on the boy’s shoulders and kissed his cheek before smiling and offering John an introduction:

“I see you’ve met our mascot.” Her smile was radioactive. “Be polite, now. Say hello.”

The boy only blinked. In one small hand, he clutched a hand-carved wooden figurine.

“This is our son, Zephyr.”

By our, she meant hers and Dean. That answered that. They were physically well-matched and had produced an equally exquisite kid. John’s pride at his son’s beautiful family silently warred with a hot twinge of jealousy. 

Aglaea, the gorgeous and Dean, the immaculate begat Zephyr, the stunning. They appeared to be living pretty happily.

Twenty-three years ago, John, the adequate and Mary, the pleasant had produced Dean, the now awe-inspiring. And Sam, the bright and unique. Mary had called their younger son a Snowflake. That’s a mother’s love. He’d sure been no looker with his pumpkin-colored curls, too-close eyes, and Dumbo ears. Everybody can’t be beautiful.

This kid, Zephyr, was a celebration of proportion and symmetry. Whatever made Dean and Aggie a delight to look at, their boy had in diamond-studded spades. Apparently, they were all used to people staring and politely waited until John was ready to rejoin the conversation.

“So, Deinos, what are we doing for the gentleman today?” Aggie asked. 

Deinos. So, Dean had taken a new name. 

John answered, “Uh, you know the basics. Eyebrows? My girlfriend complains about the nose hairs.”

He subdued his disappointment at Dean’s lack of reaction to the word, ‘girlfriend.’

“I understand.” Aggie nodded and patted Zephyr’s head. “Run along, honey.”

The boy shuddered, as if visibly leaving a daze. A chill surged up John’s spine. Aggie lead him into a room and pointed to a spa chair. It was the last reasonable moment to flee.

What if something nefarious was going on, and Dean was hexed to forget who he was? What fool enters witch’s lair without backup? No one knew where John is. No one cared. There was no one to miss him if the last daylight he ever saw came through that balcony. 

Still time to say he’d forgotten his wallet in the car and never look back. If he stayed, she might talk. Say something interesting or useful.

For what? The case was closed. Dean grew up, met a hot Greek woman, settled down and became a… what was he exactly? Father, husband, receptionist. It wouldn’t have been John’s prediction, but there it was.

Aggie pumped up the chair with her foot, tossed an apron over John’s best shirt and began to speak in low, soothing tones.

“Who might I thank for referring our services?”

“My girlfriend.” He’d prepared that answer, but not the next one.

“Her name?”

“Uh… Mary. Campbell.”

“Hm.” Aggie frowned and shrugged. “Well, we serve many people. I’m glad she was pleased. Mary must have told you, we don’t advertise.”

She went on talking until John began to nod off. As he drifted in and out of consciousness, he had a strange, shimmering vision of Aggie pricking his neck, helping herself to a single drop of blood and then offering one to her son on the tip of her finger. The boy sucked it away, his eyes glowed bright-green. Then he left again.

But the vision was hazy. Obviously a dream. 

When John awoke, it was with a feeling of buoyancy and bodily freedom he hadn’t felt in decades.

“That’s me?” He regarded the handsome A-lister in the mirror with a vague unfamiliarity. “Wow.”

Aggie smiled. “Pleased?”

If John had ever doubted the existence of magic before, he was beginning to believe. 

Back in the reception area, Dean quoted a reasonable fee of $200 for the transformation. Upon seeing the neighborhood, John had expected the cost. He accepted his receipt and let Dean show him to the door. Deinos.

As John parted his lips to give his son a formal good bye, Dean offered a barely perceptible headshake.

Skin prickling with adrenaline, John walked to the elevator and exited through the lobby. It wasn’t until he was sitting behind his steering wheel that he reviewed his receipt. Rather than numbers and an account of services rendered, the paper bore the scribbled words: 

take the boy

It wasn’t exactly cryptic. The what and who was perfectly clear. What was missing was the how and why.When was implied: Now.Or as close to it as possible.

John stared up at the sterile glass building. No place he’d want to raise a kid. Then, again, he’d spent five years living out of motel rooms and stolen cars with his son. This was probably better. 

_Take the boy. _

Dean’s instruction on the back of a receipt. Kidnapping. 

Granted, it was Dean’s son, but if the mother was unfit, why wouldn’t Dean just leave her?

Did Dean expect his father to climb up the glass face of the building, or break in and smuggle the child out from under his mother’s nose, and that of the concierge. John was too old, out of shape for that kind of crap. 

_Take the boy._

Instead, he sat and watched. He knew which apartment, but the binoculars were no help. So, he watched the front door. More plain customers arrived and departed as glamorous, upgraded versions of themselves. It was fascinating for a while.

Twenty-four hours later, the boy hadn’t left the building.

Eventually, they’d have to bring him out for school. Then John could get a better impression. See if the mother was rough with him. She’d seemed loving, but it’s easy to fake through an introduction. The boy had been a barrel of monkeys, bouncing off the walls. Then deathly still. 

The entire day had been exhausting. The watching, the close encounter with Dean. John yawned and eventually allowed himself to stretch out in the cab for a quick snooze.

He awoke an hour later with a crook in his neck and a revelation: that boy had been too young for school. Maybe five years old. It was cool out and there was no playground on the property. The temperature had been two clicks short of sweltering in that apartment. Who knew how often that kid left the house in winter?

When Aggie finally left the building, she did so wrapped in a white fur coat: albino mink, baby seal? 

Unfortunately, it was only 5 in the evening at the thinning edge of broad daylight. John would have to wait. And while he did so, a length of white fabric flapped from a window in the apartment. Surrender? 

No.

All clear. 

Once night fell, John stood at the base of the wall and pumped himself up with certainty that he would not (fall). It was almost too much like the night he’d scaled the wall at Susie’s to say farewell to Dean. The night he’d brought his son along on his wayward trip to nowhere. A choice, in retrospect, that he never should have made. 

And this was different how? 

The most exertion he’s endured lately is chasing shoplifting teenagers. That never ends in his favor. He was never a small man, and the years have packed on twenty pounds. Propelling up the side of a building is not as easy as Jackie Chan makes it look.

John stared up at the window. There are so many reasons not to do this, and no clear reason he should.

Because Dean asked him to? Dean’s whim. Was that enough to scale a wall, risk his life? Steal a child?

While John debated, the little boy appeared at his side, wrapped in a white fur identical to his mother’s. A spark of electricity bit John’s finger when the child took hold of his hand.

“Let’s go, before she comes back.”

***

Night had dropped a solid curtain of black without a fleck of moonglow. John’s headlights shone on the two-lane highway. From the corner of his eye, he glanced at the boy in the passenger’s seat whose presence filled the sedan with a prickly hum of static.

“You can stop staring at me,” the boy said.

John drove a while in silence, hoping the boy would fall asleep and that the buzzing would stop. 

Without warning or provocation, the child began to flail and scream. Wide-eyed, John gripped the steering wheel searching through the darkness for a cause for the sudden outburst.

“Mommy! Mommy! Where’s my mommy?!”

They’d been on the road nearly half an hour. The kid had come to John and walked willingly to his car. Now, he was screaming for his mother? And fiddling with the door handle. A green tinge lit the veins in his neck. 

Still yelling, the boy knocked it open and only remained in the car because John caught the back of his coat. 

“Jesus Christ, you little nut.” John struggled to keep the car centered in his lane while jerking the kid back inside. 

“Let me go. Stop it now, Zephyr!” The boy yelled and then went rigid, spine pinned to the seat, forcing the words between gritted teeth. “Sit still and behave before you hurt yourself… I want my mommy. Mister, take me home… Just be quiet, okay? John is a nice man. He’s not going to hurt you. Tell him, John?”

The kid smacked John’s arm. 

“What?”

“Are you going to hurt Zephyr?”

“What? No. Of course not.” 

“See. Nice guy. Just go to sleep, buddy, okay?”

Careful not to touch the insane child, John reached past him and closed the passenger door. He kept his eyes on the road, clutched the steering wheel. So Dean wasn’t seeking a rescue but getting rid of the kid. This would be a good time to turn the car around. 

“It’s okay,” the boy whispered. “He’s asleep now. You don’t have to be scared.”

That was no comfort considering the source.

“How old are you?” John asked.

“Well, that’s a complicated question,” the child sighed. “I’m sure I look almost five.”

“How is it complicated?”

“It’s better if Dean explains.”

Dean. The child calls his father by his given name. Dean had done so since he was 16, but that was different. With this boy, it was horrifying in ways John couldn’t comprehend.

“What was the name your mother called him?”

“Aglaea,” Zephyr corrected. “Calls him Deinos. It’s Greek for great. She’s pretty… into him.”

Children are often disgusted by their parents' affection, but something about the boy’s tone was odd. Almost jealous?

“Is she... Are you... Witches?” John asked. “You and your mother?”

The boy rolled his eyes. “Aglaea is a goddess of elegance and charm.”

“Goddess? So you’re…”

“Demigod. I guess, technically.”

Technically. Perfectly normal five-year-old speak. 

“Listen, Dean will come,” the child said, again comforting John. “He’ll explain it all. I know he has a plan. You don’t have to worry.”

Zephyr grabbed John’s hand, zapping him a little. By some miracle, John didn’t flinch or jerk away. He did, however, strongly consider taking this child back to its goddess mother and letting Dean deal with his poor decisions. 

John would give it one night. If Dean didn’t come, he’d would take Zephyr back. He’d made a great many mistakes. Taking this kid might be the crowning jewel. At best, Zephyr will report to his goddess mother that he wasn’t hurt, and they could all chalk it up to misunderstanding. 

“How about some music?” the boy said, already clicking on the radio.

He played with the static between stations and finally landed on an oldies station, crooning along with Del Shannon’s Runaway in a sweet voice that sent a warm rush through John’s chest on the high notes.

When the station went to commercial, John asked, “What do you eat?”

“Food. What do you think I am?”

“You just said you were… Don’t gods eat ambrosia or something?”

“Yeah. Like, three thousand years ago. People adapt.”

“But she’s not… You know what? Forget it. Are you hungry?”

The kid sighed. “Not particularly, at present.”

“Why do you talk like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like you swallowed a dictionary.”

“Multi-syllabic words always made you uncomfortable.”

John was on the verge of choking this little shit and tossing him out of the window. Let his mom find the carcass.

Zephyr crossed his arms and looked out of the window, mumbling under his breath loudly enough to be heard, “How did I forget what a dick you can be?”


	23. Chapter 23

Well after 2 AM, a knock came on John’s apartment door. Zephyr, the small boy who’d been curled on the couch under a blanket, sat up and rubbed his eyes. John held his place in a kitchen chair, elbows on his knees, MP5 in hand. 

He stared at the door and exhaled loudly as he stood. 

“If it’s her, bullets won’t work,” Zephyr whispered. “You’re better off being polite.”

John carried his weapon to the door anyway, looked through the keyhole. Another huge sigh of relief as he opened for Dean. 

“You still live in this rat’s nest?”

John tugged him in and closed the door. 

“We can’t stay here,” Dean said. “It won’t take her long to figure out I’m not bringing him back.”

“Hello to you, too.”

As he rolled his eyes, Dean laughed, clapped his dad’s shoulder, but then jogged over to the boy. He lifted Zephyr from the sofa, wiped the child’s longish hair from his face and sucked on his bottom lip.

John’s insides liquified as they kissed, sloppy and raw, Dean visibly lapping the roof of the boy’s mouth. One of Dean’s arms supported his son’s ass, the other hand stroked his back, lightly tugging his hair as he turned them in slow circles. 

Heart pummelling his ribs, John looked away. This was his doing. He’d created this monstrosity. John’s son was eleven. years old - not done with puberty - but not this. If there was any measuring sins of this magnitude, Dean’s was destined for a deeper Hell.

The child pulled away, nodding toward John. Dean set him on his feet and asked, “You didn’t tell him?” 

“I thought you should,” Zephyr replied. “It’s even weirder coming from me.”

Dean blew between both hands and rubbed them together. “Okay, Johnny. I can see how this looks, if you don’t have all the information.” 

“It looks…”  
  
John ran a hand over his head. The chips in his belly were staging a low-level revolt. Atrocious is how it looked. The little boy adjusted his crotch, tiny erection still tenting his white sweatpants.

“First of all,” Dean said. “What took you so damn long?”

“Me?” John huffed. “You left.”

“And you just gave up?”

“I was respecting your wish.”

“Awesome.” Dean shook his head and paced half the floor before launching the next accusation. “And you have a girlfriend?”

“You’re fucking married with a kid.”

“So, are you,” Dean said. “I just asked a question.”

“Yeah,” John lied because who the fuck was Dean to question him. “Yeah, I do.”

Dean nodded, exhaling loudly, fists curled. “What’s her name?”

“Mildred.”

Dean squinted and tilted back his chin. “Upstairs? Miss Baker?”

“Hey, don’t knock it. She gives incredible head.”

“She has no teeth.”

“She has teeth.” Granted, they were dentures. “She’s a beautiful woman.” A pageant winner, in her day. 

“She’s got to be 70.”

“And how old is your wife?”

Dean scratched his ear. Zephyr watched like they were playing ping pong. Dean sat and held out a hand for him. “Come here, beautiful.”

The boy blinked up at John before he crawled into his father’s lap. Dean clapped an arm around his middle and kissed his neck.

“You’re going to want to sit down, Dad.”

John declined, bracing himself for whatever madness would come. 

“That lead,” Dean began. “You remember? Wasn’t Aglaea, but it lead me to her. And she was willing to bring Sam back, in exchange for … favors.”

John nodded. 

“All I had to do was supply the receptacle.”

“Meaning?”

“Well, Sam was too long gone. He needed a new vessel, a body. Ideally, fresh.”

The implications were clear, though John wasn’t ready for the details. He placed his gun on the table and pulled a beer from the fridge and a second one for his son. 

“I’ll have milk,” Zephyr spoke up, then added, “Please.”

Once the boy had his cup, Dean continued, “Sam needed a vessel.”

“Got that.”

“I brought a few from morgues. Never fresh enough.” Dean’s hand rested high on his son’s thigh. “Well, I tell you what, I wasn’t going to snuff some 8-year-old kid and put him on the altar. I mean... I thought about it, but... didn’t want it to be like that.”

Thank God for small mercies.

“Aglaea had this other idea.” With a hand on his forehead, Dean encouraged the boy to rest on his shoulder. “She hadn’t had a child in a few centuries and thought I’d, you know, make a good donor. So, the agreement was in exchange for twenty years of service, we could put Sam in that kid.”

“Your kid?”

“Mine and hers, yeah.”

John breathed in the words and asked, “Twenty years?”

“It was a no brainer, Dad. I’d seen her bring back birds and plants and… What choice did I have?”

Dean didn’t have to explain his obsession with resurrecting his brother. He’d have traded his own life for Sam’s.

“Only she buried him beneath the other boy’s psyche. Said she’d let him out when my time was served.”

“So. You’re saying…”

Dean nodded. “He has two souls. I had to poke, and prod, and go all Freud, but you know what finally worked?”

“Magic?” John winced, unwilling to guess torture.

“Sex.”

Dean’s fingers slid through Zephyr’s hair, down his back. They boy’s hazel eyes were pinned on John, watching his reactions. 

“Sam?”

“Hey, Dad,” the boy muttered. 

Dean explained, “Mostly, Sam takes over when Zephyr sleeps.”

“So, his body doesn’t rest?”

“Not a lot.”

“That’s not healthy.”

“Also,” Sam spoke up. “Zephyr is five and I’m … well, I was eight when I died, but I’ve been with Dean all this time. I don’t feel any younger than he is. Older in some ways.”

Dean kissed Zephyr’s knuckles. 

“So, he’s your son?” John asked.

“Biologically.”

“Technically,” the boy said. “I’m the soul born to you and Mary Campbell.”

John blinked a few trillion times, calculating everything he’d heard. There wasn’t any trace of his odd-looking son in the godling on Dean’s lap. 

“Tomorrow, first thing,” Dean said. “We’re flushing out the other boy.”

“Zephyr.”

“He’s asleep now,” Sam answered.

“I assume you’re talking about spell work,” John said. “Will it kill him?”

“It will complete what Aglaea started.”

“And what happens to him then?”

“Same thing that happened to Sam when he left his body.”

John covered his mouth, paced the floor. Once he was ready to continue the conversation, Dean and Sam had locked lips again. 

“Do you two ever let up?”

“We have each other for a few hours each night,” Sam nuzzled Dean’s cheek. 

“He wants you too, Dad,” Dean said. “Don’t you, buddy?”

Sam bit Zephyr’s lip, looking John over before he nodded, shy and tentative. John’s head shook itself even as his lips parted. 

“Yeah, come on, Dad,” Dean said. “You fucking need this.”

John gazed at his outstretched hands. At Sam/Zephyr’s reddened cheeks. Both boys’ flawless faces, smooth skin and supple bodies. 

“No.”

Dean held Sam’s hair back from his face and kissed him again. 

“You only love me cause I’m pretty as you now,” Sam taunted.

“That’s bullshit. I don’t care what body you’re in. You’re fucking everything. You know that?”

The boy nodded, no trace of doubt or resistance as Dean pulled his shirt over his head and latched on to his collarbone. Sam squealed with laughter as if he was being tickled. His lust-blown hazel eyes flicked over John’s face and the mirth shifted to sultry want before they closed again. His tiny arms hung lax on Dean’s shoulders.

“What do you want tonight?” Father murmured to son.

“Everything.”

“You gonna take my cock tonight?”

Sam nodded.

“So good for me, Sam.”

Dean stood with the boy in his arms, delivered him to the bed, and pulled off his own shirt.   
John’s body responded with a rush of warmth at the sight of that muscled, now-broader back he hadn’t touched in years, the freckles he knew like a map of the constellations. 

Dean peeled off Sam’s pants, then unbuckled and removed his own. He stood at the edge of John’s bed, arranging the boy how he wanted him - Zephyr’s head at the foot of the bed, the head of Dean’s cock stretching his young lips out of proportion.

“That’s it, baby. Get it nice and wet for me.”

Slurping, soft gagging and delicate coughing filled the room and flooded John’s system. Dean was the same way when he was younger. So greedy for it. Eager to please his father. Would it have been any different if John had ever sucked off Ol’ Hank? Just once. If the old man had seen Johnny’s mouth was good for more than striking.

When Dean got good and ready, he put the boy’s head up on a pillow.

“Open your legs, Sam. Show Daddy your pussy. Come on.”

Was Dean referring to himself in the third person or did he mean to show John?

Thank god, his beautiful, bare body blocked the view. John felt slightly less preverted and sick admiring Dean’s beauty than the child’s. Dean’s ass clenched as he kneeled, his hamstrings and arm muscles straining as he jerked over the boy. 

“I’m gonna shoot all over you. That what you want?”

“No,” Sam squealed. “Inside. Please.”

“You want to feel me inside you?”

“Yes, please.”

Dean grinned over his shoulder as if to say, what did I tell you? 

“Dad, tell me you got lube.”

John barely managed to shake his head. 

“It’s okay,” Sam said. “Just go slow.”

Dean nodded and spat into his palm. From where John stood, Sam wasn’t visible at all. He imagined the little feet pressed to Dean’s shoulders must be cold and soft. Dean’s arm worked as he fingered the boy open, plying loud, high-pitched groans from his throat.

After a while, Dean carefully lowered himself between the wide little legs, moaning at his slow descent. He brushed the boy’s long, auburn hair from his face and helped himself to another languid kiss.

“Aw, Dad. He's so tight, man.” Dean sighed. “You got to go so slow, so do you don’t hurt him, you know? After that he fucking loves it. Begs for it like a goddam —”

“Stop!

At the edge of his own capacity to stand idly by and watch, John swiped his keys and fled through the door. 

***

John hung up after the first ring. He leaned his head against the cold glass inside the payphone booth and shed a few snotty tears. 

Two of the most beautiful human beings John ever saw were getting it on in his bed. He might as well have stayed and watched. He was already going to Hell anyway. Might as well have greased up his dick and slid into that tight little baby hole. Because that madness was 100% his doing. A massacre of his own making.

John hadn’t had anything like that smooth, soft boy flesh in years. Had only ever wanted it from Dean. His own boy. Flesh of his flesh. After a while, John had felt entitled. Dean was his to love as he saw fit.

This was different. It was wrong, even if somehow Sam was in there. No matter how hot he and Dean were together. How into it the little boy seemed. Wrong is wrong. Right?

John could turn around now, go back and partake of Sam in that beautiful child’s body. Pass him back and forth to Dean like an illegal substance. 

He shook the filthy, evil notion from his head and picked up the receiver again. He stared at the folded, tatty paper. He’d had this number in his billfold for nearly eleven years. Had planned, repeatedly, to call Mary and plan a drop-off. 

John had imagined letting Dean go home to his mother to reclaim some kind of normalcy. He’d just never had the guts to break it to Dean, or to face Mary again.

Now, thanks to his cowardice, less than a mile away, Dean was fucking his five-year-old son on John’s bed.

This had to end. John wasn’t dumb enough to call from his cell phone, which could be traced. He fed in three dollars worth of quarters and waited for the connection.

“Campbell,” Mary answered. 

At least he wouldn’t have to go through Susie to get to her. 

“Hello?”

Butterflies the size of pteradactyls in his stomach urged John to hang up again. The last thread of his manhood made him speak. “Mary?”

She was silent. No doubt, she’d recognized his voice instantly and was running down the reasons for John’s call, after all this time. 

“Is he all right?”

“Yes,” John answered. “He’s fine. He’s…”

Balls-deep a pre-schooler, but otherwise great. 

“Listen, I don’t…”

There were not adequate or sufficient words to express John’s sorrow. He couldn’t conjure much shame about the sexual aspect of his relationship with Dean. That had been heaven for both of them. It had healed them in the wake of Sam’s passing. What he regretted was that it cost the boy his mother, his childhood, his innocence, his morality, and any chance at a natural relationship with his own son. 

All John said was, “It’s been… I’ve got…”

Just how far would he go to protect his grandson from Dean? Was he willing to fight? To die? To kill? Because it would come to that. If he went through with this, Dean would kill him.

“Listen, I’m going to make it right,” he said. “I swear.”

John hung up the phone and walked half-way back to his place knowing that he’d find Dean’s bare ass rising and falling, his fully grown dick splitting open the too-snug hole as little Zephyr/Sam cried out and dug his tiny fingernails into his brother/father’s back. Sighs and screams at the sublime blend of pain and pleasure. His skinny legs open to either side of Dean’s comparatively massive body, a strange butterfly on John’s bed. 

Rather than return, he sat on a park bench, ignored the wood in his pants. Dropped his head in his hands. Tried, in vain, to recall anything he ever did right.

John sat on a park bench like a wino with no wine. Like a homeless man whose apartment had been taken over by a pair of horny, beautiful children. Unlike a homeless man, John had somewhere to go: straight into the hungry mouth of deeper torment. He held his place until dawn rose, bruise purple, with the shriek of morning birds and the silent screams of early worms.

Finally, he worked up the nerve to complete the long march home.

There was no question. John needed to remove Zephyr from Dean. If John went back to the goddess, who knew how pissed she’d be. He wasn’t qualified to raise another child. Wouldn’t even try. He’d stolen that joy from Mary. Now, he would return it. Let her become the doting grandmother.

Upon discovering the apartment door ajar, the worst John could assume was that Mildred Baker, his landlady and occasional fuckbuddy had heard the noise and come down to enforce her No Pets, No Children policy. 

There would be no explaining. She must have screamed like a Banshee before calling the authorities. John would have to bail out his son and find a lawyer willing to represent him. He’d have to get the little one from CPS. All his fault.

John took a breath and entered the apartment. He didn’t find Mildred or the cops. 

He found Dean, nude in bed, dick still hard, arms suspended in midair as if fending off an attack. No sign of struggle or forced entry. No sign of the boy. 

Hunter instincts kicking in after years of disuse, John pulled his firearm from his holster before rushing to his son’s side. Dean’s skin was cold to the touch, his limbs rigid. John’s breath caught in his throat, but he carried on with protocol, checking the closet, beneath the bed, anywhere a perpetrator might lurk. Then, he allowed himself to truly see his son’s face frozen in wide horror. 

John couldn’t look long. He covered his mouth, searched the room for nothing. For anything. He screamed out loud at no one. If he’d stayed behind. If he’d made Dean stop. If he’d never led his son down this path in the first cursed place…

Now, he’d be responsible for arranging the hunter’s funeral Dean would want.

Oh, Dean would want revenge, too. He’d want his father to arm himself to the eye teeth, chase this bitch down, and chop her into bite-sized pieces.

But John was fucking tired. The violence, the blood, the inexplicable, the supernatural. It was all too much.

He leaned against the wall, slid to the floor, dropping his gun to free his hands to cradle his face. 

“Dad?”

***

John peeked into the backseat at Dean's rug-wrapped corpse that he’d wrestled into a manageable flat position. He blinked past the mist-like figure in his passenger seat and glued his eyes on the road. 

“Do you have any idea how much effort it takes to make myself visible, and you don’t even want to look?”

In the corner of John’s eye, Dean flickered and then vanished. 

His voice remained audible in John’s head. “Better?” 

“No. Not really.”

“Look, this is cake,” Dean’s embodied voice said. “We complete this spell and we go get Sam.”

“I know nothing about spells, Dean.”

“Which is why I’m going to walk you through it.”

John shook his head. 

“What?” 

“I’m losing my mind,” John answered out loud to the empty car. “My boys are dead and I’m talking to myself.”

“Sam’s body is gone, but he’s still here. And I am not dead. Fucking pull yourself together,” Dean’s voice snapped. “Aglaea didn’t kill me. She wouldn’t do that. It’s not… couth. In twenty-five, fifty years, he spell will wear off and I’ll be right as rain. You want to wait until then and go get Sam?”

“I can live without the sarcasm.”

“Can you?” Dean huffed. “How about you fucking put your foot on the gas and act like you have a destination, old man?”

If this voice was a hallucination, it was a damn accurate likeness of his son’s intolerable personality. John did as he was told, because speeding was the only way to get aggressive with a ghost voice he didn’t want to blast into non-existence. 

The siren blared. John swore under his voice. “Of course.”

“Just be cool.”

“You be cool,” John said, intentionally not turning to glance back at the corpse. 

Not corpse. Dean’s body. 

It sure as hell would appear like a corpse to anybody looking. No pulse, no body heat, no breath.

John forced a pained smile at the officer, supplied his paper work, waited for his ticket and endured the cursory inspection without letting the squeak escape his lips. 

“Rug-cleaning?” the cop asked. 

John nodded and chuckled painfully. 

“All right, well, slow it down out there, buddy.”

Dean waited until the cop was back in his car before he shouted, “Beautiful. That was fucking beautiful.”

“Shut up. Keep it down,” John shot back. “This is ridiculous, you know that? It’s over. Why can’t you just accept that dead things stay dead?”

“How about a little faith, Johnny, huh? I ought to know if I’m dead or not,” Dean said. “I’ve been with Aglaea five years. This is her version of sending me to the basement. All you need to do is get to mom.”

John took a deep breath and rested his face on the steering wheel. 

There was blessed silence for a moment before Dean asked, “You’re sorry, aren’t you?”

“So sorry.”

“About us?”

“Sometimes, yes,” John admits. “You never got to be a normal kid. You never played ball anymore. I let you get into this mad, mad world. I made you into this weird… thing.”

“Yeah, it was weird, Dad. I’m not going to pretend it wasn’t. But I always knew you loved me. I always felt safe," Dean said. "And now we're going to get Sammy back.”


	24. Chapter 24

John let the car idle outside of Susie Campbell’s place. He remembered it well. Not exactly a mansion. More of a manor house, at least according to Susie. John didn’t know difference. Didn’t care.  
  
All that house for one chick and her sister. For all John knew, those two had gone lesbo on each other. He’d been part of stranger things.

John could call the house and somehow convince Mary to step outside, chloroform her, take the blood and go.

“What are we waiting for right now?” Dean’s voice asked. 

John swatted the air, as if he could wave the sound away. “What am I supposed to say here?”

“Go with the truth.”

“Hey, Mare. Long time. Our son is dead and I need —”

“I am not dead.”

“Okay, well…”

“We don’t have all day here, John.”

“Dean, I swear to God, if you’re not dead, I’ll kill you.”

“Better do it now while I’m down, old man.”

“Just shut up, will you?”

John stepped from the car and slammed the door, as if he could keep Dean’s personality trapped inside with his body.

His boots crunched on the gravel. As he walked, he prepared for the eventuality that Susie answered the door. Then, he prepared for seeing Mary again after 11 years. Should have shaved. Put on a clean shirt. He reached the bottom of the steps, then turned around and walked back toward his car. Forget Dean’s spell. There had to be another way to do this. 

“John?” Mary’s voice froze him in his tracks. 

Heart racing. Not too late to run. 

“What are you… Where’s Dean?”

John held his breath and turned. She’s gained ten pounds or so, cut her hair. Otherwise, not much had changed. Still the beautiful girl he’d met on the train. She walked briskly toward him, scouring the car. 

“Listen, Mary. He’s …”

Her face fell when she didn’t see anyone sitting in the car. For no plain reason, she continued on, peered into the back seat and dug through the open window. All of Hell’s fury unleashed with a manic scream as she rushed John, pounding with her fists. 

He caught her wrists and she continued to flail, hurling profanities and accusations. “What have you done to my baby?”

The fight melted out of her and the sobs took over. Her head hung, body sagged, but John was still reluctant to let those hands go, in case they started to swing again. Ol’ Samuel Campbell made sure his daughters knew how to throw a punch.

“Mary…”

“No. No! This is your fault.”

She wasn’t wrong, but Mary didn’t have the whole story. It wasn’t as if John had screwed their son to death. 

“Mom, relax,” Dean spoke and glimmered into a soft, shimmering image with its non-substantial hand on her shoulder. “Everything’s okay.”

Mary’s mouth fell open. Her legs buckled. John caught her as she fell.

With the exception of lamb’s blood and ewe’s first milk, the ingredients were relatively common and easy to find: extra virgin olive oil, basil, holy water. It read like a soup recipe. 

John left Dean’s body wrapped in his back seat as he collected all the required elements. He’d thought, at first, that they’d have to find a YMCA to find a sauna and elevate Dean’s body temperature. As it turned out, Susie had a jacuzzi, pool and a sauna. 

So, with Mary carrying Dean’s feet, they lugged the body into the small tile room and lay him on the wooden bench. For a moment, they stood shoulder to shoulder, looking down on the lifeless form of their second son.

“He’s going to be fine,” John reminded his wife - because even after all this time, holy matrimony still bound them. 

Bound even more closely by ageless, unseverable parental bonds. 

Still, when John reached for her hand, she snatched away. Fair.

“What now, son?” John asked out loud to the room.

And heard nothing in reply. For a moment, there was only silence. Then, Mary perked up and touched her chest.

“Me?” Her eyes grew saucer-wide as she took a deep breath. “He says I’ll need to lead the ritual. What does that even mean? What is Aglaea?”

“Dean’s wife,” John answered. “It’s complicated.”

“He says her magic only works with feminine energy? I don’t know how to— Okay. Okay, I will.”

With a few deep breaths, Mary steadied herself, squared her shoulders and asked John to leave the room.

***

When she opened the door, two hours later, he was sitting on the floor with his legs crossed like a pretzel - no clear idea how he’d unfold himself again or stand. He looked up into Mary’s eyes and then past her. Dean was sitting upright on a bench, staring straight ahead at nothing, like the time he ran his bike into a lamppost and got a concussion.

“He…” Mary looked back at him. “I think he needs a moment.”

She stared down at her blood-covered hands. There would never be a better moment for these words. Looking up at his wife, John didn’t even try to filter or censor. He only spoke:

“Mary, I… owe you… everything. Gratitude. An apology. An explanation. Dean and I, we needed each other at first. I can’t really explain it, better than that. I know you don’t want to hear this and I don’t know how else to say it. I fell in love with him. I know it’s not… typical. I didn’t plan it. It happened. I took him away because I didn’t know what else to do.”

Now that Mary was silent and merely glaring down with a vaguely nauseated expression, John could go on and explain about Sam. But Dean was on his feet, in the frame of the sauna door. 

“We need to go,” he says, his voice garbled as if there was liquid in his throat, or he was speaking from under water.

***

They dig through the dead of night in a cemetery. Every now and again Dean stops and stares off in the distance, like a robot rebooting. It’s disconcerting and slows down progress. More than half the time, John digs alone and his back does not like it one bit. He tries to bit more knee into it.

Mary was converted to Dean’s religion by the resurrection of her son, but they’d left her behind in Michigan with a promise to return soon. No need for her to witness this madness. John hasn’t just fucked his son. He’s let Dean turn into a gravedigger. Or the foreman of a grave-digging expedition. It’s John who is almost single-handedly exhuming his younger son’s remains. 

As he dug, John muttered to himself, lyrics to songs, passages of poems. JFK’s speech in Berlin was a classic. 

Every so often, Dean snapped out of his trance, took a loud breath and tossed a few shovels of dirt over his shoulder. But it was John’s trowel that struck the hollow sounding top of the casket. 

In some fresher graves, there’d be a smell, but thankfully, there was none emanating here. Thank God. 

Still, John could not go on. He understood what Dean was trying to do, but he couldn’t be the person to open this coffin. To see, to touch, desecrate his baby son’s bones.

As far as he’d fallen in his life, there was a limit to John’s descent. He climbed out of the grave shining his headlamp on Dean who was returning from the car with a huge black mortar and pestle in one hand. In the other, he hauled a three-gallon Stanley cooler, like you’d see at a football game. Since his rejuvenation, Dean walked a bit jerkily, like a man with a broomstick protruding from his ass.

John blocked his path to the gravesite. For the first time in years, he could effortlessly overpower Dean. The madness had gone too far.

The act of digging had been automatic. Physical activity his body had completed dozens of times with their hunter friends. But now, the full impact of Dean’s intentions struck like a cargo train.

“There’s another way,” John said. “There has to be.”

“There isn’t another way, Dad. This is it. And it has to be now,” Dean said. “I need you on this. I am not at 100%, but I’m going to make this right. You just need to … Listen, if anything happens to me, Sam is lost. Are you hearing what I’m saying?”

Before, when Dean would say things like that, John would brush it off. Nothing could ever happen to Dean. Fate could only be so cruel. Now John had seen both of his sons as corpses, he was past the point of further argument. He stepped aside to let Dean do his worst.

Although he knew Dean’s intentions, he could not watch his son use mortar and pestle to grind a half hektius (equivalent of roughly 2.5 modern gallons) of Sam’s carcass to add with equal parts enchanted lamb’s blood.

While this was taking place, John leaned on the hood of his car, lurching, gagging, mouth flooding with vomit. 


	25. Chapter 25

John would have planned a covert attack, entered under the cover of night. Dean used his key fob and walked into the front door of his apartment, calling: 

“Hey, honey. I’m home.”

John had his orders. The bulletstorm wasn’t to end until Dean had the boy. Aglaea flinched and waved them away like a cloud of gnats. By that time, though, Zephyr was standing beside Dean whose hand rested on his shoulder. 

The goddess raised a hand. 

“Go for it.” Dean wrapped an arm around the boy’s chest holding him close. 

She straightened her posture, eyes never leaving her son. “Why are doing this?”

“Why?” Dean asked. “Because you completely bullshitted me. You were supposed to give me back my brother, not…”

“I did not deceive you, Deinos,” Aglaea spoke calmly. “Your brother is safe. In fifteen years--”

“Zephyr will be so strong, Sam won’t have a chance.”

She didn’t reply or deny his statement.

“You lied, Aglaea.” He gave the boy a squeeze and whispered in his ear. 

“Zephyr? Come to me,” Aglaea gestured. 

Green electricity flowed through the veins in Zephyr’s neck and he spoke:

“_εξακολουθεί να είναι η αγάπη μου να μένει ακόμα_  
_exakoloutheí na eínai i agápi mou na ménei akóma*”_

Instantly, Aglaea’s features fell and then froze into a solid mask of fury. Mystified and still holding his useless weapon, John, watched her skin crystalize into a glasslike state. Cool, small fingers pulled at his hands. 

“Dad, we got to go.”

John blinked down at the darling little boy, nodded and followed them to his car. 

*(Be still, my darling. Be still)

***

As the car barreled down Route 56, all three in the front seat, Dean pulled Sam (in Zephyr’s body) under his arm like a papa bird, protecting his chick. 

“That was amazing, boy. I mean, you just… You really did it. Going to be sorry to see those powers go.” 

“Not me,” Sam said. “I feel like a hot wire all the time. Don’t know how Zephyr can stand it.”

“It’s probably because you’re used to being in a vessel that didn’t contain magic,” John said.

They both looked at him like he’d said something incisive. It was just common sense. 

Dean let out a loud hoot and asked, “How long will she be like that?” 

Sam shrugged and shrank even smaller. “I forgot to think about it.”

“So, it could be twenty minutes or two hundred years?”

“Sorry. I… The gunshots were so loud. I didn’t think.”

“It’s okay.” Dean pulled him close. “It’s all right. Everything’s going to be fine, now.” 

***

Dean directed John to the parking lot of a nearby abandoned warehouse, and then went silent, staring straight ahead through the windshield. Beside him, Zephyr’s face read abject fear. 

“Please don’t hurt me, Mister.”

“I’m not going to…” John waved a hand in front of Dean’s eyes. He snapped. Nothing. “We’re just going to…”

Only waiting worked. Dean blinked, inhaled sharply. 

“What the hell is going on with you?”

He shook his head, regulating his breath. “Mortals can only manipulate the elements. That’s what magic is. Gods are elemental. The energy flowed through her.”

“So?”

“So, undoing her spell is less than perfect. But, hey. I’m, right?” He spread his arms, grinned and kissed Zephyr’s cheek. “Let’s do this.”

A meat locker couldn’t have been colder. Dean instructed the boy to lie on the top of a steel. His breath floated up in tiny clouds as he shivered and asked, “Daddy, where’s Mama?”

“Mama’s taking a nap,” Dean answered, setting up his supplies. “Everything’s fine. You can rest, too, Zeph. Just go to sleep.”

“S’cold.”

“It’s all right, buddy. Everything’s going to be fine.”

Dean patted his chest and began to whisper his incantation. While he bound the boy in Maritsa River reeds (pilfered from Aglaea’s stash), John’s task was to force feed him the stinking concoction of lamb’s blood and Sam’s mortal remains. At the first taste, the kid spit it out and began to cough and cry. 

“Hold him down,” Dean yelled. “He drinks every drop.”

The three-gallon container was nearly full to the brim with the viscous stuff. Would that much even fit in his belly?

Zephyr began to struggle against the tethers and beg his father to let him free. Dean jammed the funnel into the boy’s throat and spooned in a ladle-ful of his witch’s brew. Before Zephyr could spit it out, Dean pinched the boy’s nose, and the funnel emptied. 

The boy sputtered, coughed and shrieked.

Dean called out, “More!” 

He shoved the ladle into John’s hand and continued muttering his spell as he massaged the mixture on the struggling boy’s pressure points, filling his ears, nostrils and navel. Glancing over, Dean found that John had not spooned a single drop of the stuff into Zephyr’s mouth. 

“What is the problem?”

“Are you sure this will work?”

“It’s going to work,” Dean said and spooned in another helping. 

The boy convulsed, resisted swallowing. 

“You’ve seen Aglaea do this?”

“I’ve already told you, Aglaea doesn’t have to do this. She uses nature’s energy and channels it liketurning on a light switch. This is magic I picked up from some of her adherents.”

“Sam’s in there, right? Why can’t he just… evict Zephyr, without all this?”

“Because, technically, it’s Zephyr’s body. If he’d been dead before Aglaea inserted Sam, or if she’d pulled Sam’s soul in before Zephyr took up residence, like she was supposed to do… but it is what it is, now. This is our shot for Sam. You get that, right? If we don’t do this, Sam gets weaker, Zephyr gets stronger. Who knows if Sam will be able to come forward at all after a while? Who knows what happens to him after this body dies? We don’t have a choice.” 

“And you’re sure?”

“Why are you questioning me, John?”

“Because it hurts him. What if it kills them both?”

“Sam?” Dean whispered into the boy’s ear. “Sammy?”

The boy’s teeth gnashed, his spine arched like a bow.

“Zeph?”

“Daddy, please.”

“See?” Dean says. “It hurts him. Not Sam. Keep going.”

John lifted a ladle full of the potion, winced at the odor. Rather than pour it into the funnel, he set it aside and drew his weapon.

Dean blinked. “What is this?”

“This is your kid.”

“You don’t think I’ve thought about that?” Dean stood upright. “I understand that. I do, but Sammy… I’ve already lost him once. I can’t…Dad, I’m so close… I…”

Dean lifted the ladle to pour in more. John centered the gun on his chest. Dean pulled a gun of his own.

“If we both die, he’ll be on his own,” John said. 

“John, I can’t let Sammy go.”

“And I can’t let you hurt your son. Right now, he’s both, right?”

Dean’s jaws ground together. 

“That means, he’s as much my boy as yours,” John said. “We take him as he is. Let the chips fall. Or else, you and me, we end this now.” 


	26. Chapter 26

Dean stopped taking naps when he was a year old. Times change. Now that he was half-zombie, he didn’t eat anymore and slept in twelve-hour stretches. He’d fallen into one of the double beds the moment they checked into the motel. 

John unpacked the Denny’s takeout and set up the chicken fingers and double broccoli on the table. The kid didn’t touch it. He was too busy watching John’s every movement. 

John brushed his knuckles over Dean’s cheekbones, quietly amused by his wide-mouthed snores. He unplugged the clock radio from between the beds and plugged it into the socket where he could set it beside the boy’s plate. 

John dialed past the static and talk until he found an Oldies radio station playing Good Golly Miss Molly. The kid sat silent and still for a moment. Then, he ate a single chicken strip. Within twenty minutes, he’d emptied his plate, burped and asked for milk.

A couple songs later, when Bobby Darin started singing Dream Lover, the boy began to mouth the words, bopping his head. A warm swell of nostalgia settled low in John’s belly. He watched Sam sing along for a few seconds before he swooped the kid out of his chair and began dancing with the baby monkey on his belly like he’d done when his boys were tiny things. 

“Sammy?”

“Yeah, Dad.”

John chuckled and patted the kid’s back, stroked the little guy’s hair. 

“You all right?”

Sam nodded. 

“You smell pretty bad.”

Sam cringed. He was never was a big fan of bathing. “It’s that crap Dean made.”

“Is Zephyr…”

“Asleep.”

“Come on,” John said. “We’ll make it a quick one.”

John had the boy in the warm water, washing his back with a soapy rag when Dean leaned on the doorjamb and folded his arms. After grinning his fill, he stepped over, turned up John’s chin and kissed his lips. 

“Where are the keys?”

“For what?” John asked. 

“Need a couple beers around here.”

“Your narcoleptic ass is not taking my car.” John groaned as he stood, planted another kiss on Dean’s lips and gripped the keys in his pocket. “Get him to bed.”

In the lobby, the late-nite receptionist described how to get to the nearest convenience store - a few blocks away. John relished the midnight stroll and his role as the silent, but deadly mercenary among the colorful characters loitering in the parking lot. He added a quart of whole milk to his case of beer and walked back to the motel. 

Should have seen it coming. Should have known he’d open the door and find the little boy naked on the bed on all fours. The sight shocked him anyway and sent an immediate thrill to his crotch. 

His mouth hung open as both Sam and Dean looked up from their task of giving and taking a rock-solid seven-inch dick. 

They both groaned as Dean slid all the way home and collapsed onto the boy’s back, knocking him flat onto his belly. They panted while John hovered with his groceries in hand. 

“Want to close the door,” Dean suggested.

Without diverting his eyes, John kicked it closed. Half of his mind had already turned and dashed back out into the night. He stuttered for an excuse before he turned to follow it. 

Then, the boy’s little hand reached out. 

“I want Dad.” 

John’s younger boy had been three years older than this child when he’d died. John’s older boy was seven years older when their affair began. Now, Sam was younger and Dean older and John was utterly paralyzed. 

“Daddy?”

Dean gripped the base of his dick and exhaled as he pulled out. The scent of sex was thick on the air as he crossed the floor and took the drinks from John’s hand, placing them on the floor. 

“The milk.”

“It’ll wait,” Dean said as he helped his father out of his jacket and began to unbutton his flannel. 

He dropped both onto the floor and ran his fingers through the salt and pepper hair on his chest, glancing back at Sam. 

“Hot as fuck, right?”

The little boy nodded, biting his lip, prodding his own ass with his little fingers. 

“You boys…”

Dean popped the button on John’s jeans and unzipped his fly.

“Son, I don’t think—”

“Shut up, Dad.”

He followed the command with a brutal, inescapable kiss. All the while, his hand snaked down his father’s shorts and began to stroke until John was rocking back and forth in his hands. 

“That’s it,” Dean breathed into his mouth. "Just relax.”

“Dean.”

“We used to talk about it, didn’t we, Sammy?” Dean said. “Back before, in the Lawrence house. What it would be like if Daddy would play with us.”

It couldn’t possibly be true, but as Dean smirked, this new, little Sam nodded. 

“Please,” he said. “I really want it, Dad.”

Dean went to his knees, wielding his infinitely convincing mouth on John’s cock. When John was on the verge of bursting, he stood, nudged Sam aside, and sat down at the foot of the bed. 

Sam’s was a quirky-looking kid before. Now, he was all hazel-eyed, dark-haired and immaculate. He kneeled between his father’s legs and spread lube down his shaft, biting his lip with concentration. 

“He’s already wide open,” Dean said. “I spent an hour eating him out.”

“Always did.” Sam grinned, still greasing John’s dick.

“Fucking huge, isn’t he?”

Sam nodded and peered up into his father’s eyes with a trace of concern in their gold-rimmed azure depths. 

“You don’t have to—”

Sam stood on the bed kissed the words from John’s mouth. A sweet, innocent, sultry aggression that stole the breath from his father’s lungs. 

“I want it.”

With that, he lay on his back and spread his legs, knees to his ears. John steadied his cock at Sam’s entrance while Dean rubbed his chest and kissed his cheek.

“You’re doing great, buddy.”

Sam’s mouth was wide open.   
Even as much as Dean had opened him, his was the tightest hole John had ever entered. The man shut his eyes and clutched Sam’s slender thighs, forbidding himself to blow.

“Dean, I don’t know,” Sam whined.

“You can do it, buddy. Be tough.”

“It doesn’t have to be now,” John said. 

It didn’t have to ever happen. It was a miracle just to have his boys again. If he never touched either of them this way again, this was already a miracle.

Sam bit his lip and nodded. “I can do it.”

After five minutes of huffing and whining, John was balls deep inside of him. Tears streaming from both their eyes. Dean pushed the hair from Sam’s face, kissed his pink lips. 

“You’re incredible, buddy. You know that? Taking like a man.”

Sam nodded and Dean shifted his position so he lay with his groin level to Sam’s face. Without hesitation, the boy wrapped his mouth around the head of Dean’s shaft sucking until he could drink, noisily like he was offering ambrosia.

***

When all was done, Sam lay between them, cooing and relaxing within the cocoon of his fathers’ love. 

“You know you’ll have to call your mother grandma?”

The boy yawned. “So weird.”

“I know, right,” Dean said, nuzzling Sam’s cheek, pulling his little leg onto his thigh, fiddling with his cute, little pecker. 

It was John who sat up, dug beneath their bodies retrieving the blankets to pull over them all. 

“You okay over there, old man.”

John chuckled. “What do you want me to say? One son is a zombie. The other is a ... what are you, anyway?”

“I’m a kid, Dad,” Sam answered. 

“And Zephyr?”

“Still asleep.”

“You think he’s traumatized?” John asked. 

Dean sighed. “What is with you? Why are you so worried about Zephyr?”

“Because he’s one of us,” John said. “Like it or not, he’s Winchester. He’s our blood.”

Neither of his boys disagreed. None of them spoke for a long while, listening to the soft sounds of WHIU, the best of the 50s and 60s. 

The men curled up around the boy between them, as if their sole purpose in life was to keep him safe. Little Sam twirled his finger above his face, the veins in his neck running bright with an eerie glow in the darkness. An electric-green bubble flickered and then solidified around them like colored glass.

“If I don’t use it, I’ll lose it,” Sam said. 

“It’s awesome, buddy,” Dean assured him. “Can you put some purple in there?”

A sheer plum tinge shimmered over their force field. 

Dean fell asleep without another word. 

No amount of shaking or calling could rouse him from these episodes. At least now it was nighttime and they were as sheltered as they’d ever been.

Still, John asked, “Can you do anything about him?”

“It’s wearing off. He’ll be fine,” Sam said, letting the bubble fade. “We all will.”

John let out a deep breath against his son’s cheek. “I love you, you know?”

“Mmhm.”

Sam smiled himself to sleep. John was the last one awake, whisper-singing along with the King, “For my darling, I love you.   
And I always will.”


End file.
